


Break Out

by FireSoul



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Supergirl (TV 2015), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Prison Break AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-01-20 10:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 40,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12431361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: Things in the Lance family have always been complicated, but now one of the sisters is on death row while everyone is convinced that the other has lost her mind. But maybe she isn't so crazy. Maybe sometimes, you just have to take matters into your own hands.(A Prison Break inspired AU but may not follow the Prison Break storyline exactly)





	1. Guilty

Rene lets out a low, appreciative whistle as he swivels on his stool and disposes of his last needle.

“Alright,” he says, turning back to the blonde who has spent the better part of the past few days lying in his tattoo chair. “You’re done.”

She smiles at his words, smirks actually, and rises to sit and pull on her bra. “Thanks Rene,” she says while fastening the clips and now moving for the shirt.

“You’re welcome.” He tells her, he almost wants to ask if she can stop putting her clothes on for about five seconds so that he can look at the work he’s just completed. It’s some of his best, he thinks .He didn’t get to be as creative with it as he normally likes; but she wanted precision, and damn did it turn out good.

She must notice him staring, his eyes traveling up with the buttons of her shirt, because by the time his gaze reaches her eyes she’s smirking at him again and she actually starts unbuttoning her blouse.

“You want to look at it?” She asks knowingly, she even pretends not to notice how he needs a minute to process that her clothes are actually coming back off.

“Can you blame me?” He finally manages as she tosses her shirt back to the side. Her bra remains where it is, and that’s perfectly fine by Rene, he can still see most of what he’s just done. “I’ve spent almost three days drawing every inch of this, I haven’t been able to look at the full thing.”

She smirks again at the wonder in his eyes, that famous Lance smirk that he’s always heard so much about from Oliver but never really seen.

“In that case,” she says and without a moments hesitation she frees herself of her bra and he turns his eyes away. Sure, he’s just spent the past two hours detailing perfect grey lines onto every centimeter of available skin on her chest. But he’s a pro; he wasn’t looking, not like that. “You deserve to see your work.” She finishes her sentence, not even laughing at him for shying away. He turns back cautiously, his breath catching when he sees it but she doesn’t say anything.

The two of them sit there in silence for about a minute before his eyes flick back to hers, letting her know that he’s committed enough of the tattoo to memory and so she stands and turns, pulling her hair over her shoulder and allowing his eyes to roam as freely over her back as they did her front.

“You know,” he finally says after another minute, once he’s seen her back and so she reaches for her clothes and begins to redress herself. “I always thought you might have some ink hidden somewhere, now I know it’s gotta be somewhere below your waist.” She laughs at his words, a true laugh of pure amusement, and he smiles almost sadly at it. “Still, I never pegged you to get covered, and definitely not with demons in the Sistine Chapel.” She laughs again while finishing off the buttons on her shirt as she turns to face him.

“I know it seems like a bit much-”

“You think?” He laughs, cutting her off.

“But it’s going to help me with a case, a prisoner who’s given up.”

He laughs at that, he can’t help it. He hasn’t known her for very long, but he knows enough that he wouldn’t put it past her to get half her body covered in tattoos just to reach out to someone.

“Laurel Lance,” he says her name musingly, “Always trying to save the world.”

 

* * *

 

The judge’s gavel came down hard as she delivered her guilty verdict. It might have come down a little softer, maybe, were it not for Oliver still trying to argue Laurel’s defense; ridiculous considering she had pled guilty.

Once Oliver has finally stopped trying to argue, if only to save his dignity as a lawyer, he and Laurel are escorted to a holding cell where Laurel is locked behind the rusting medal bars.

“What is the matter with you?” Oliver demands the moment the two of them are left alone.

“Ollie-”

“Why would you rob a bank?” He continues harshly, “You just got promoted to District Attorney!” He practically seethes in her face through clenched teeth. “You don’t need the money, what are you up to?”

Laurel smiles softly at him, wishing that she could reach through the bars and lay her hand on his face. But she can’t, and she can’t tell him what she’s up to because he’ll try and stop her, and the instant he figures that out he’s sighing.

“What about your niece?” He asks her, trying to appeal to what he must believe to be the last remaining rational side of her.

But she smiles softly at him, the kind of smile she gives when she wants something.

“Will you look after her?” She asks and he sighs again, this time out of regret.

“Laurel,” he says to her firmly, and yet sadly. “Why did you do this?”

“I can’t tell you that,” She quickly replies, and he blinks at her, looking betrayed.

“Why not?” He asks, even though he hadn’t been expecting her to tell him anything. “Laurel we’ve been through everything together. Since we were kids-”

“Which is why I need you to trust me,” she cuts him off not loudly, but firmly, and he stops.

He looks at her, just looks at her for an immeasurable amount of time, completely helpless. “Please,” all she can think to do is beg him, “Please just trust me.”

The officer coming to lead them back to the courtroom for Laurel to receive her punishment interrupts them.

She looks at him one more time while the officer secures the handcuffs onto her, and he nods; he still doesn’t know what it is that she thinks she’s doing, but he’ll do as she asks.

The judge looks very disappointed as they approach the stand, which Laurel can understand. She’s stood before this very judge numerous times as an attorney, she can only imagine what must be running through the woman’s head seeing her here as a criminal.

“Dinah Laurel Lance,” The judge says as she and Oliver are stopped just before the stand, looking over her paper for a third time as though searching for some fine print saying that this is all just some sick joke. “Your previously flawless record, not to mention your personal history as the previous District Attorney, indicates that you know the law and chose to break it anyway.” She looks over at Laurel from the rim of her glasses, as if waiting for the blonde to break down and beg for another chance. But she never does. “So, for these reasons, I feel it is imperative that you serve your time. Therefor I am sentencing you to eight years in Iron Heights containment facility, with the possibility of parole available in five.” Laurel nods in acceptance, biting her lip in order to refrain from smiling. “Now, it is my understanding that you are currently the legal guardian of your niece.” Laurel nods and fights the urge to look over her shoulder. She told Sin not to come today, and at first she thought the teenager actually listened. But when she was brought back in for sentencing she caught sight of the familiar short dark hair. “Obviously that guardianship is going to be temporarily terminated, do you have someone who is willing to assume guardianship of your niece during the time that you are contained?”

“Yes your honor,” Laurel meets the judges eyes with her quick answer, “Oliver here has agreed to serve as Cindy’s guardian.” She states with nothing more than a glance towards Oliver, which she repeats when the judge eyes him suspiciously.

“Yes, your honor.” He confirms, “I believe you already know that have been a family friend of the Lance’s for many years now, we felt that it would make the most sense for me to assume guardianship of Cindy whilst Laurel is incarcerated.” He says, and the judge still looks suspicious, but not in a bad way.

“Very well,” she ultimately agrees, “I hereby sentence Dinah Laurel Lance to eight years in Iron Heights containment facility and transfer guardianship of Cindy Katherine Lance to Oliver Queen.”

 

* * *

 

It’s less than two days later that Laurel finds herself shackled in the back of a transport van on her way to Iron Heights. She is being shipped in with five other women, many of whom are keeping quietly to themselves, with the exception of one.

She’s a small woman, both in stature and in weight, and she’s sitting at the end of the row by the guards muttering nonsense to herself in an English accent. She must feel that she’s being watched, by someone other than the guards anyway, because she looks up just then and locks eyes with Laurel.

“You,” she all but gasps, “You’re the one I’m supposed to watch.” Laurel furrows her brow, wondering what the woman means by that. “They’re coming for you, all of you. They won’t let you mess with their plans.” She goes on and now she has the attention of the rest of the van, not to mention how she’s made it clear that it isn’t any accident the guards are sitting closest to her end. “You’re in trouble, and you’re going to-”

“That’s enough,” one of the guards, a burly man with a shaved head and a faint scar across his nose, interrupts her. He’s the one the Iron Heights sent over to head the transport, Laurel thinks, and she makes a mental note to keep her eyes open for him in the future.

But for now she doesn’t have time to focus on that, for now the van has stopped, and she has a mission to fulfill.

 

* * *

 

After going through processing and all of that other fun stuff that comes with entering prison Laurel is led to the prison floor. It’s really just one long hallway lined with cell after cell. She’s lugging her mattress pad and a few blankets, along with a spare jumpsuit and undershirt, with her as she goes until the guard, who is the same one from the transport, finally brings them to a stop outside of a cell in the middle of the hall.

“Wake up Lisa, you got a new roommate.” He shouts while opening the cell, and in response a woman comes sliding herself off the top bunk.

“Finally some excitement,” She says with a smirk, her eyes scanning over Laurel in a way that makes the blonde woman feel scrutinized.

“Don’t let her get eaten,” The guard warns almost teasingly, almost.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” The woman, Lisa, promises with a hint of mischief in her eyes.

The guard nods at her then closes the cell, leaving the two women inside to get acquainted.

* * *

 

“That was Mick,” Lisa explains to Laurel during yard time later on, after they’ve gone through the whole “what are you in for?” routine. “He can come off as an ass but he’s one of the only decent guards in this place. As long as you avoid doing anything stupid you’ll get along with him just fine.” Laurel nods at the information, making a mental note of it. “Over there’s the bleachers, the basketball court; never go near any of it.” Lisa warns and Laurel looks quizzically at her.

“Why not?” She asks and her cellmate only shrugs.

“This place is kind of like school, how each clique had their turf. The older prisoners get the bleachers, so you can go there if you’re with one of them, but they don’t like too many people besides each other. Courts are where deals go down, so trust me when I tell you to stay away from there. Those girls are nothing but bad news.” Laurel nods along as her cellmate talks, of course she knows she’ll probably break every rule to come out of Lisa’s mouth eventually, but it’s good to have a lay of the land.

At some point Lisa gets caught up in a conversation with someone else, and so Laurel takes the opportunity to really scan the area around her. She takes in the exact locations of the guard towers and the fences, how much barbed wire lines the top of each one, the faces of the people around her, and where everything in the yard is placed. She wanders around on her own until she eventually finds the storm drain in the center of the yard and pulls something from her pocket.

 

* * *

 

_“What’s this baby?” Her father asks as Laurel, little ten year old Laurel, sits at their kitchen table with a stack of crumpled papers beside her, and one in her tiny hands._

_“It’s supposed to be a crane,” she pouts, “But I can’t get the neck right.”_

_Her father chuckles to himself as he pulls one of her rejects free of the pile and inspects it, holding it firmly yet delicately between his fingers._

_“You know, it kind of looks like your sister’s pet canary.”_

* * *

 

When she’s sure no one is watching Laurel lets the paper fall from her hand and through the bars of the grate. She never did get the hang of how to fold the bird’s neck properly.

Oh well.

Once that’s done she finds her way back over to Lisa, who is just breaking away from her conversation.

“I need to find someone,” she blurts before she can think any better of it, but at least Lisa looks intrigued.

“Got a score to settle?” She half teases and Laurel scoffs a laugh.

“Hardly,” she promises, “Know where I could find Sara Lance?”

Lisa’s face falls at that, her eyes studying the face of her new cellmate as though confirming that the woman is serious, and then she nods over towards the fence at the far end of the yard.

On the other side of the fence are more fences. These run vertically through the grass, and each one is about the size of a bowling lane. There are eight of them, Laurel notes, though some are empty. The ones that aren’t empty contain only one person in each, and Laurel’s attention is brought to the second one. Inside it is a blonde woman who is far too focused on the dumbbells in her hands to notice that two women from the general population are watching her from not too far away; that or she does notice and simply doesn’t care, it’s hard to tell which.

“Rumor has it they’re giving her the chair at the end of the month,” Lisa breaks the silence and only then does Laurel realize that she’s holding her breath.

“So I’ve heard,” she manages to say. She’s staring straight ahead, her eyes locked onto Sara, but she can feel the way that Lisa is studying her.

“She murdered the… well at the time the woman was the secretary of state, but now she’s the vice president. Anyway, Sara murdered her husband; people here call her The Assassin. What are you mixed up in with her?” Lisa asks and Laurel, despite herself, can’t help the sad smile that escapes her control.

“She’s my sister,” She says and she can feel the surprise on Lisa’s face but she still doesn’t look.

She just keeps her eyes trained on Sara.


	2. First 24 Hours

Laurel keeps watching Sara for another few minutes, her eyes locked onto the form of her sister as she lifts her dumbbells. (She also notes the presence of a guard in the doorway of her sister’s little cage, watching her closely.) Finally she tears her eyes from the sight and begins walking away, leaving Lisa to stand there completely bewildered.

“Wait!” Her cellmate calls as she hurries to catch up, “Aren’t you going to talk to her?”

“Eventually,” Laurel answers shortly, not even sparing a glance back at the other woman. “But I have some other business to take care of first.”

 

* * *

 

Leaving the courthouse with Oliver is… awkward, to say the least. Sin sits quietly in the passenger seat of his car and once they pull up to his apartment building she follows him up, her backpack slung over her shoulder.

They’re just as silent as they ride the elevator up to the apartment, if not more so, and when they finally reach the proper floor Sin follows her new guardian down the familiar path to his home.

“Laurel didn’t give me much notice that uh… that you would be staying with me so uh… the guest room still looks like the guest room but you can do whatever you want with it.” He awkwardly stutters and she knows that he got about as much of a heads up about this living arrangement as she did, as well as his opinion was asked about as much as hers was, which is all to say none.

“Thanks,” she says with a nod and so that leaves the two of them standing there in his living room, staring awkwardly at each other. “Why don’t I go put my bag down?” She suggests, because damn it someone has to make some sort of move, and he nods.

“Yeah sure, good idea.”

She smiles through closed lips at him before turning and leaving the room, letting herself into his guest room and pausing for a moment in the doorway.

 

* * *

 

_“I know it’s not home,” Auntie Laurel says as she comes to stop in the guest room doorway behind her twelve-year-old niece, her strong yet gentle hands resting firmly on the young girl’s shoulders as she stands almost frozen in the doorway of the familiar, yet alien, room. “But we can decorate it any way you’d like,” she continues on right in the girl’s ear. “I think you’re due for an upgrade from those pink butterflies anyway.”_

* * *

Sin shutters and wipes away a tear at the memory. It’s been two and a half years since that day, she’ll be turning fifteen soon, and if she never finds herself in another plainly decorated guest room again in all her life that will be just fine by her. She steps in alone, with her head held high, turns on the light, and closes the door behind her. The walls of the room are green and the bedspread is a dark brown, the pictures on the wall nothing but decorative pieces. They aren’t of people, but rather one shows a beach scene and the other a sketch of a starfish. There’s a nightstand beside the bed that is home to the room’s only lamp, so needless to say the light is somewhat dim. Sin goes and plops her bag onto the bed, unzipping it and rummaging through to see what she grabbed this morning, as it might be another few days before her social worker arrives with the clearance for her to go back to her Aunt’s apartment and grab her things, supervised of course.

She finds that she has everything she needs for the next few days; clothes, toothbrush, a few movies, hairbrush, makeup, razor, shampoo and conditioner, and at the very bottom of the bag, sealed safely in an airtight mason jar, the small amount of weed that she owes to a friend.

 

* * *

 

Laurel sits on the edge of the medical chair whilst the prison doctor skims over her file and starts pulling out anything that he’s going to need, including insulin and a needle because she’s in here after writing down on her entrance form that she has type 1 diabetes.

“So, Laurel Lance, you’re Lisa’s new cellmate?” He muses in a drawling voice and she nods.

“You know Lisa?” She asks, partially interested. If Lisa is up here in medical often enough for the doctor to know her then she could be a valuable asset.

The doctor flicks his eyes up from his folder then, the smirk on his face making it look like he’s trying to keep from laughing. “Sorry, I should’ve introduced myself. Dr. Leonard Snart.”

Laurel feels her eyes widen just a bit and she bites on her lip, processing the information. “You’re Lisa’s…”

“Brother,” He supplies, “I started working here long before Lisa incarcerated, and the only reason I’m telling you this is so you can tell her I say hello.”

“She doesn’t fake sick to visit you?” Laurel teases as Snart approaches her with the light he’s supposed to shine in her ears. He had explained already that, since this is her first visit, he’s required to give her a basic check-up.

“Lisa’s one of those people who says she’s fine so long as she isn’t dead. She’s been here for almost two years now and she’s only come up here once, and she asked to see the other doctor.” He explains while checking her ears, now moving onto her eyes.

“So you two aren’t close?” She asks as he puts his light away and moves for the stethoscope.

“I didn’t say that,” he tells her, “Lisa’s smart, she knows she’s painting a target on her back every time she comes up to medical, especially if she were to see me.”

“You want me to keep an eye on her, don’t you?” Laurel asks, smiling when Snart frowns at her because she’s guessed correctly.

“I would appreciate it,” he replies in a tone that says she does indeed have a choice, but he’s hoping she’ll say yes. “Just make sure she isn’t doing anything stupid.”

Laurel smirks at that, “Your sister has herself handled,” she tells him, “But if I have to come up here all the time for my insulin, I might as well give you a report.”

* * *

 

It’s been one day.

Hell, it’s _barely_ been one day, and yet Oliver has found himself leaving work early to go down to Sin’s school for a meeting with the principal and a counselor.

He gets there and heads into the front office, where he then signs in with the secretary and she points him towards the principal’s off. He knows the path already, of course. He went to this school after all and God knows he spent his fair share of afternoons in the very chair that he finds Sin in.

She’s sitting right outside the door, headphones nestled firmly in her ears but judging by how she looks up when he arrives Oliver doubts she’s actually listening to anything, and it’s low if she is. He holds her gaze for a minute, not really sure what he’s supposed to do here, and then with a nod he walks past her into the open door of the office.

“Mr. Queen,” Principal Paul Holt greets him and Oliver nods, both at him and at Mr. Olsen, the school counselor sitting in a chair next to Holt’s desk. He silently takes a seat in the only remaining chair in the room, and it feels so much like he was the one in trouble here. “Mr. Queen,” Holt begins again, “Cindy was caught by Mr. Olsen here in possession of drugs.”

“What kind of drugs?” Oliver sighs as he asks the question, fighting the urge to run a frustrated hand over his face because come on Sin, you could give it one day?

“Marijuana,” Holt says almost reassuringly, “It was very little, we’ve already spoken with the police, and they’re willing to only charge Cindy with a misdemeanor, and she will be suspended for three days.”

Oliver nods at that, he can accept that, but he suspects that there is more to this meeting than what’s just been said.

“Mr. Queen,” Mr. Olsen starts, as if reading Oliver’s mind. “I’ve been Sin’s adjustment counselor ever since she started at this school, I know she hasn’t spoken with her mother since the arrest.”

“Your point, Mr. Olsen?” Oliver doesn’t mean to snap, he knows that the other man is only trying to help, but Sara isn’t exactly a subject he enjoys discussing either.

“My point, Mr. Queen, is that I keep up with the news; Sin’s mother is going to be executed at the end of the month.” It’s quiet for a long minute, that reality settling over the room like a heavy blanket, before Olsen finally speaks again. “You’re going to be raising Sin for the next five to eight years, and at the end of the day she’s not entirely sure of who you are.”

Oliver glares over at the man when he says that. It’s not like he wouldn’t expect Sin to be confused about that, but it’s something Sara has always insisted they never talk about.

“I’m not her father,” he says firmly through gritted teeth, and Olsen nods.

“Maybe not,” It sounds like he doesn’t totally believe what he’s heard, not that Oliver really cares. “But people once suspected you were, and only Sara knows who is. The fact is Mr. Queen the rumor is always going to be out there, and until she gets proof one way or the other Sin is going to spend the next few years wondering just who it is that’s raising her.”

“So what do you suggest I do?” Oliver all but growls at the counselor, and Holt decides now might be a good time for him to step in.

“We just think that it might be a good idea for Cindy to go and try reconciling with her mother, maybe see if she’ll tell her anything she should know, before it’s too late.”

* * *

 

Yard time, Laurel is quickly learning, is going to be crucial in putting her plan into action. She’s not going to have many chances outside of the yard to acquire the assets that she needs for what she has planned, and time is of the essence. So it’s only on her second day in Iron Heights, and just past noon, when she finds herself ignoring the first of Lisa’s warnings by approaching the bleachers. They are occupied by a few of the older imamates, the youngest probably around the age of fifty, and she ignores all their glances as she approaches the red head on the end.

“This seat taken?” She asks with her sweetest smile on her face. The woman’s eyes roam skeptically over her before she finally shakes her head and so Laurel settles herself on the edge of the wooden plank, her hand slipping underneath the wood to fidget with a bolt and a quarter.

“Looking for a lay of the land new girl?” The woman she’s approached asks disinterestedly and Laurel shakes her head.

“No ma’am,” she answers, “Just have a question for you.”

“Oh, and what might that be?”

“Is it true that you and your husband actually found the treasure of The Bighorn Mountains?”

The woman laughs at the question, “No truer than the lie that I killed him afterwards.” She says, “Every new girl who comes through that gate, every one of them all want to know if Nora Allen really found buried treasure and left her kid an orphan because of it.”

Laurel looks away, briefly, at the words; her fingers still gripping tightly to her quarter and turning against a screw underneath her, though if Nora has noticed the movement of her hand she isn’t saying anything.

“Sorry, I was just curious.” She says apologetically.

“Just remember kid, you’re not the only one curious about things.” Nora says, nodding ahead of them at the sight of an approaching red head with another, much younger, woman at her side.

Nora gets up and leaves Laurel there with the new visitors, the red head smirking at her devilishly.

“You’re new,” she says observantly.

“I am,”

The woman smirks at the answer, clearly pleased by it. “Well why don’t you let me show you around?” She suggests in a tone that doesn’t exactly make it sound optional, especially when paired with the hand that she holds out, the one not holding onto the hand of her friend. “Pretty little thing like you shouldn’t be in this place all alone.” She insists and Laurel stares at the offered hand for a second, dumbfounded.

She knows what’s happening, what the woman is really suggesting, and that she should run. But running will only make things worse, not to mention that she doesn’t feel comfortable leaving the bleachers without the bolt she’s been subtly turning ever since sitting down.

“Thank you, but I think I’ll manage.” She says as nicely as she can, and just like that the red head’s smile morphs to a frown and her girlfriend looks like she’s scared for her life.

“You sure about that?” She asks, her previously sweet voice now coated in ice, a warning hidden in it that this will be the last chance she offers.

“Positive.” Laurel answers and the second woman squeaks, like she’s about to say something, but the red head holds up her previously extended hand and stops her.

“It’s ok Boo,” she says in a tone that reminds Laurel of all those prissy cheerleaders in high school. “We may be in prison, but there’s still free will in this country. What’s your name?”

“Laurel,”

The woman nods, “Well Laurel, Iron Heights isn’t exactly a place you want to make enemies.” It’s a final warning, and Laurel knows it, but she sits firm in her place and eventually the red head crinkles her nose in distaste and walks off with her friend.

They get called for line up to go in not long after, and by that time the yard’s bleachers are short one bolt.

 

* * *

 

“Are you going to church?” Lisa asks once the two of them are back in their cell. Currently Laurel is sitting on her bottom bunk, pretending to be interested in her magazine, while her cellmate is sitting on the floor brushing out her hair.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Laurel replies, sparing a glance up from her magazine. “You?”

Lisa snorts at the suggestion, “Please, I haven’t been to church since I was in the foster system.”

Laurel nods at the new information, mentally filing it away for later.

“No,” her cellmate goes on, “My fiancé is coming to visit, I’m going to conjugal.” She explains with a smirk that Laurel allows herself to match. She’s heard about conjugal in prison; a small room where married couples are allowed to be alone with each other, the only guard standing outside. A lot of prisons have started doing away with the practice, but Iron Heights is a hold out.

Still, Lisa managing to get her fiancé a visit must of taken a lot of good behavior.

“Have fun,” she says teasingly just as she hears the guard coming to collect anyone who wants to go sit in the chapel for an hour and listen to the mass.

“I will,” Lisa smirks, “Anyway, I asked about church because I heard they’re making your sister go, thought you might want to see her without a fence separating you.”

Thoughtfully, Laurel puts her magazine down, weighing in her mind the pros and cons of revealing herself to Sara now.

 

* * *

 

Sara hates mass.

It’s not that she doesn’t believe in God, although her answer to that question has been changing lately depending on the day. She definitely needs the extra prayer time, especially if it turns out that there is a God, which apparently she’ll be finding out one way or the other very soon. She loves being allowed out of her hole (cell technically, but she would argue) for an hour every once and awhile, even if she is still shackled from her ankles to her wrists. But why the priest needs to recite the entire mass in Latin is perpetually lost on her. Two and a half years in Iron Heights and she’s never once heard of anyone here, prisoner or guard, actually being able to understand Latin. But whatever, it’s an hour out of her hole, and even if she sleeps through part of it, she’ll take what she can get.

The mass goes through it’s normal procedure, and when it’s time to go she gets herself standing without aid from the guard who had moved to pull on her arm. Moving with the shackles is awkward, but she’s learned how to do it by now, and the guard trusts her enough to allow her to walk without literally being leashed. She turns around so that she can be marched back to her hole, other prisoners falling into their own lines to head back to the floor.

That’s when she see’s her.

Just as Sara turns she gets a perfect view of a tall blonde woman with green eyes staring right at her, a mischievous smirk on her face.

Sara just stares, wide eyed, and momentarily convinced that the she has finally lost her mind and she’s hallucinating. But then a guard approaches the woman and ushers her to join her line.

Sara knows that a church is the number one place in which you should never swear, but one slips past her lips anyway.


	3. Family Ties

Yard time, in Sara’s opinion, couldn’t come soon enough.

Sure, that is her usual opinion on the subject, considering it’s an opportunity for her to see sunlight and other human faces, but today she’s particularly anxious to get out from her hole to her cage. Her sister’s face hasn’t stopped swimming through her head since church yesterday, to the point where she was barely able to sleep during the night. She has about a million and one questions as to the how’s and the why’s of her sister being here, but there is only one at the forefront of her mind.

When the guards let her into her cage for yard time she’s careful to keep to herself at first, as she isn’t technically allowed to talk to the other prisoners. She kills a good ten or so minutes drawing circles in the dirt the way that she normally does, until she’s fairly sure that none of the on duty guards are going to care much if she engages in a small conversation. So she saunters to the end of her fence and starts scanning the main yard, looking to see who’s close to her.

She notices Cupid and her girlfriend, but quickly decides against it, as she’d rather those two stay as far away from Laurel as possible. She keeps looking and sees a few more potential informants, but no one who is both close enough and will be willing to help. That is, not until the “prison pharmacy” as she’s sometimes known, notices her scanning the area.

Lyla Diggle, or simply Dig, glances over to the blonde to let her know she’s seen her surveying the yard and then casually wanders her way over to the end of the fence.

“You looking for something?” She asks, being careful to stay a foot away from the solitary prisoner.

“Someone,” Sara whispers loudly in reply, “New girl, or I think she’s new anyway. Bottle blonde, kind of tall?” She asks and Dig snorts.

“You’re going to have to be more specific Assassin, there’s more than a few of that type in here.”

Sara rolls her eyes, “Her name’s Laurel,” she growls and Dig gives her a sideways glance of suspicion. “She’s my sister ok?” She nearly snaps, “And I want to know what the hell it is she’s doing in here.”

Dig nods without another word and leaves. When she goes Sara lets out a breath and shakes a sudden bout of nerves out through her wrists, pacing along the short length of her fence while she waits. It’s not like it’s been a long time since she last spoke with Laurel, at least she doesn’t think it has. Keeping track of time isn’t exactly easy for her, but she’s almost certain it was only two months ago that her sister last visited. She came and told her that she had gotten the District Attorney position, the freaking District Attorney! Now she’s locked up? Why? What could have possibly happened in the past few weeks that the angel Laurel Lance has found herself behind bars? How-?

“You’re looking for me?”

The all too familiar voice had Sara snapping out of her thoughts, spinning on her heels and finding herself face to face with her own big sister.

“Where is my daughter?” She snarls the question before she can even think it, and she knows that she isn’t really allowed to talk with other inmates, so she needs to at least pretend to be careful, but damn it she doesn’t care. She marches right up to the fence and glares at Laurel furiously, so furiously that she’s almost worried when the other woman isn’t visibly fazed in the least. But she’s not worried, she’s too damn angry to be worried. “I left you in charge of Sin, and now you’re standing in front of me in a jumpsuit! So where is she?!”

“Relax,” Laurel almost has to yell just to get Sara to hear her, “She’s fine, she’s with Ollie-”

“What?!” Sara snaps in a panic, hundreds of different scenarios racing at lighting speed through her mind.

“Hey!” It’s the voice of a guard now; obviously they’ve made too much noise. “Break it up over there!” The woman orders and Sara glares at her sister one last time, knowing that if they don’t walk away from each other in the next five seconds they’ll both be in deep trouble. Laurel looks like she wants to say one last thing, but Sara isn’t about to give her that chance, and so she retreats to the far corner of her cage without another word.

 

* * *

 

After yard time Laurel is brought up to medical to get her daily shot of insulin and she’s left waiting for a minute while Snart finishes up something in the next room.

A minute is all that she needs.

First she glances at the window of the door to make sure Mick isn’t looking, but he’s caught up in a conversation with one of the other guards. So, quickly, she ducks down and rushes to the vent below the sink and slips a paper “canary” from her sleeve, watching it fall to the bottom. It doesn’t fall for long, only a little more than a second, and once it lands there is barely a splash. Satisfied with her test Laurel hurries back to the examination seat, just in time for Snart to enter.

He looks up from the file in his hands at her.

“Hope you weren’t waiting too long,” He drawls and she shrugs.

“Not like I have anywhere better to be.” She replies and that actually gets a smirk out of him.

“So you’d rather have me stabbing a needle into your arm?”

She smirks in reply to this as he prepares her shot. “Lisa’s fiancé came to visit yesterday.” She says conversationally and he stops for a moment, and then resumes his work.

“Ah yes, Cisco Ramon.” He muses and send her a look, “I don’t want to know if it was normal visitation or conjugal.”

Laurel smiles devilishly at the answer, getting the feeling that he already knows what the nature of the visit was.

“You don’t approve?” She asks almost mockingly as he takes her arm, rolls her sleeve, and inserts the needle.

He snorts at the question, “I’m her brother, I’m never going to fully approve.” He looks up at her with a mocking glare. “I’m sure you can understand.”

Her face falls for a minute, caught off guard, and as he finishes with her shot she composes herself. “You know about my sister?”

He chuckles at her surprise, “There are only two women with the last name Lance in this prison, it wasn’t exactly hard to figure out.” She nods, “Now,” he continues, “A question for you; are you sure it’s type one diabetes that you have?”

Again, Laurel’s face falls, and she blinks at him in surprise. “I’m sorry?” She finally asks, “Yes I’m sure, I’ve had it since I was a kid, why?”

He sighs and begins putting away his tools, “Probably just a fluke,” he admits, “But I got your blood results back from the last time you were here and it didn’t look like you need any extra insulin.”

Laurel crinkles her brow at that, “Strange,” she muses. “But I’m definitely diabetic, have been my whole life.”

He nods, “Like I said, it was probably a fluke of the equipment, but just to be safe I’d like to test you the next time you’re up here.”

She nods acceptingly at that, “Sure.”

“You haven’t been experiencing any tremors or anything, right?” He asks, as if trying to catch her in the lie.

He’s going to have to try harder than that.

“No,” she replies with a shake of her head and he nods.

 

* * *

 

Tossing and turning Sara lies awake in her bunk; there isn’t much else that she can do these days, thinking about more than she’s thought about in a long time. She’s thought about her family nearly every day since she’s been in here, but never before has she had so much to wonder about. Most of the time she wonders about Sin; what she’s doing, if she hates her, if she’s scared, how her friends are, those kinds of things. She’ll think about Laurel a lot as well, and she’s doing just that right now, thinking about the last time her sister came to visitation.

* * *

 

_“The appeal didn’t go through?” She asks dejectedly into the phone and Laurel sighs, her eyes focused on the dirty surface of the counter._

_“No,” she answers, “I’m sorry Sara.”_

_She sighs, wishing that she could just say that it’s ok; but it isn’t._

_“Did you do it?” Laurel’s voice is just barely a squeak when she speaks for the second time, so close that Sara can barely hear it._

_Barely, but she does._

_“What?” She asks as she leans herself closer to the glass, a feeling of betrayal bubbling inside of her chest. “No, Laurel I didn’t. You know I didn’t-”_

_“It was an airtight case Sara,” her sister interrupts. “I know you’ve said you didn’t do it, but they have you on security footage.” With a sigh Sara looks away in frustration, chewing angrily on her lip as her sister recounts the story she’s heard regaled so many times in the past two years. “You went into the parking garage, you walked right up to Robert’s car, got in the back seat, got out two minutes later, and that night he was found dead, having been strangled from behind.”_

_“Except he wasn’t there when I got in the car!” She finally exclaims, although not too loudly, after all she doesn’t want the guards deciding she’s too unstable to be allowed visitation. “I told you, he called me saying he wanted to talk to me and to wait for him in his car after he got out of work. I got in the backseat because that’s where I’m used to sitting in his car. I was there for two minutes when I got a text saying something had come up and he wasn’t going to be able to make it, so I went home.”_

_“And your phone got hacked that night, erasing all your text messages.” Laurel picks up with the end of the defense a little too quickly, and all Sara can do is sigh._

_“I know it sounds crazy, but I didn’t kill him.” She pleads and Laurel, for not the first time since this all started, looks like she’s seriously debating whether or not she believes her._

_“Your finger prints were found on the belt he was strangled with, not to mention it was a belt that I bought you-”_

_“So what?” Sara all but snaps, tears starting to brim in her eyes, “You think I killed him?”_

_They’re both quiet for a few seconds, Sara staring expectantly at Laurel through the glass and Laurel avoiding her gaze._

_“You had motive, Sara.”_

_“What motive?” She snaps quickly, “The island?” She supplies herself without really giving Laurel a chance to answer. “I killed him because he and Ollie floated in a life raft and were picked up by a shipping freighter, while I floated on a piece of metal to an island? Is that what you think?” She’s almost disgusted by her own words, the very words that the prosecution had said back at her trial._

_“He left you for dead Sara,” Laurel says calmly, as if trying to convince her younger sister that she had committed the murder. “You were stuck there for two years, you had to give birth alone-”_

_“So why would I wait so long to kill him?” She cuts Laurel off, “You’re right, I was there for two years before Ivo found me. If I wanted to kill Robert out of revenge, why would I wait another ten to do it?”_

* * *

There’s a knock at her door that pulls Sara from her memories, demanding her attention.

“Lance,” The guard’s voice calls sternly, Sawyer, Sara identifies. “You have a visitor.”

She furrows her brow at that. In the entire time she’s been in here only Laurel has ever come to see her. A small part of her wants to take that hope and believe that earlier today, as well as yesterday, was nothing but a dream; that Laurel isn’t here, but still on the outside, and here for a visit. So Sawyer comes into her hole and locks her into her shackles, and from there the two of them make their way down to the visitation area. Of course despite that small part of her Sara knows that this isn’t a dream, so her next logical conclusion as to her visitor’s identity is Ollie. After what Laurel told her earlier he’s probably come to discuss the insanity of all this, or to ask her yet again for the identity of Sin’s father. She won’t tell him that of course. He knows all that he needs to, whether he believes it or not is his choice.

Well, she isn’t totally wrong.

When she arrives and is led to the end seat on the row of telephones and Ollie is sitting there on the other side, but Sin is standing behind him.

She moves slowly into the seat, shakily, watching both her daughter and Oliver as if she’s seen a ghost. She tries to keep focused on Ollie, but she can’t tear her eyes from Sin. It’s been over two years since she saw her last, and she looks so different. Laurel’s shown her pictures, of course, but it’s different in person. She’s gotten better with doing her makeup, even if the eyeliner is still a little heavy. She’s added a second piercing to each of her ears, and perhaps the most noticeable is that her once long hair is now a few shades darker and styled into a pixie cut. She’s avoiding her eyes, of course, but Sara is still only able to focus on Oliver once she’s sitting and has the phone to her ear.

“Hi,” he says awkwardly.

“Hi,” She splutters in reply and Oliver is quite for a minute, before cocking his head towards Sin.

“She was caught with weed,” he explains, “It wasn’t a lot, but the school counselor thinks that she could benefit from talking to you. You know, before…”

“Before it’s too late?” She finishes what he can’t and he looks away shamefully. “It’s ok, Ollie.” She assures him with a small smile, “Thanks.”

He nods at that and vacates the chair, making room for Sin to take his place.

She looks as though she’d rather be anywhere but here.

“Hey baby,” Sara says once her daughter has taken hold of the phone, hoping that her voice sounds sweeter than it does anxious. “How are things?”

“Oh, you know,” Sin begins, bored. “My Aunt just got arrested for robbing a bank, my counselor thinks I’m turning into an even bigger delinquent than I already am, and I’m talking to my mother on death row, so pretty good.” She deadpans sarcastically and Sara can’t help it when her eyes flit away from her daughter, if ever so briefly.

“I’m really sorry honey,” She finally brings herself to say, “I don’t know why any of this is happening-”

“You killed a guy!” Sin cuts in and Sara stops, closing her eyes with a sigh of frustration, before releasing the breath and opening her eyes again.

“No, I didn’t.” She says firmly, but Sin looks away, like she’s sorry for saying it but also believes what she’s said. Sara swallows at that sight and blinks back the tears. “But,” she finally brings herself to continue, “That doesn’t matter now. I’m assuming Ollie brought you down here so I could tell you not to do drugs or something along those lines.”

Sin shrugs at that, “It wasn’t mine,” she says, “I was giving it to a friend.”

Sara smiles a real smile at the way her daughter only half glances up at her, “I’m not mad if it was-”

“Well it wasn’t,” Sin snaps, “I’m not like you; I’m not going do something stupid and get knocked up at sixteen or anything.”

Sara purses her lips at that, taking in how Sin’s furious gaze suddenly turns to guilt and it takes all she has not to look away. “You weren’t a mistake Sin,” she says calmly, and not for the first time. “You were a surprise, I’ll give you that, but I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life and you… you are one of the best decisions I ever made.”

Sin sits there for a moment, glaring at her; Sara doesn’t point out that she can see the tears brimming in her eyes. Finally, the teenager slams the phone back onto it’s hook and gets up so fast that she almost knocks the chair over.

 

* * *

 

“How is she doing?” Laurel asks when Oliver sits down across from her and picks up his phone, emitting a sigh through that fake smile of his.

“She’s adjusting,” he answers, “How are you doing?”

Laurel huffs at the echoed words, “Adjusting,” she repeats, and of course she sees the frown on Oliver’s face. “What?” She demands and it’s another few seconds before he actually speaks.

“What are you doing Laurel?” He finally asks, “I know you did this to be with Sara, what I don’t know is why. You can’t help her in here.”

“I can’t help her out there.” She counters quickly, “Ollie, if anyone can help her from the outside it’s you.”

“I’ve tried Laurel!” He says in exasperation, his voice pleading with her to see reason. “I’ve poured through every inch of her case but the evidence all points to her-”

“But she didn’t do it,” Laurel pleads.

“Do you think I don’t believe that?!” He nearly snaps out of frustration, “If I bought for a minute that Sara killed my dad do you honestly think I would be sitting here right now?” He goes on and only as he finishes does he notices the new presence behind him, standing over his shoulder, and he turns to see Sin.

“I’m ready to go whenever you are.” She says simply before heading over to the other side of the room without another word, leaning herself against the wall and waiting until he’s turned his attention back to Laurel to stare intensely at the back of his head.

“Look through her case again,” Laurel pleads once more, “Try and find something.”

“What?” He asks and his voice isn’t confused, or accusing, but desperate as Laurel shakes her head.

“I don’t know,” she admits, “Anything that could suggest she was framed.”


	4. Pieces

“What do you know about PI?” Laurel asks Lisa one morning while the two of them are lounging on their bunks, Laurel shaving her quarter quietly against the bolt from the bleachers.

“Not gonna happen,” Lisa drawls in a voice that almost reminds Laurel of her cellmate’s brother.

“What do you mean?”  
Lisa huffs indignantly and leans her head over the edge of her mattress, her brown hair falling all around her in a wild, upside-down mess. Laurel looks over the top of her magazine at her pointedly.

“I mean you’re not getting hired on it.” Lisa barely clarifies. “Mick let’s Helena Bertinelli run Prison Industries, don’t ask me why. Anyway she won’t hire new inmates.”

Laurel hums musingly at the information, glancing down briefly at her half shaven bolt.

“I’ll take my chances.”

 

* * *

 

Laurel finds Helena at a table during lunch, playing, and most definitely cheating at, a game of poker with some other inmates.

“Helena Bertinelli?” She asks as she approaches and the woman turns to face her. She’s younger, younger than Laurel is herself, and she decides not to ask where she got the bright red lipstick in prison.

“Can I help you?” She asks with a venomous smile, one that Laurel returns.

“I hear you’re in charge of PI, I want in.”

Helena laughs, outright laughs at the request before turning back to her game.

“Don’t hold your breath Blondie,” she says, “We’re not looking to hire anyone new.”

Laurel nods at that, a small smile curling at the corners of her lips; if only she could get things done the easy way in here, it would save so much time.

“Just think about it,” she says, reaching over Helena’s shoulder and placing down one of her paper canaries.

Helena looks over her shoulder again with a glare, and Laurel winks, sauntering off back to her and Lisa’s table whilst attempting to conceal her shaking hands.

 

* * *

 

Dinner is awkward.

Actually, everything is awkward. There is nothing about this arrangement that isn’t at least a little bit awkward. Sin and Oliver are quiet as they pick at their separate take out meals, sitting as far from each other as they can possibly get on Oliver’s little bar counter, and trying to ignore the awkwardness that only seems to grow with every passing minute that they spend not talking about the ever present elephant in the room.

“How was your visit with Aunt Laurel?” Sin finally breaks the quiet around a mouthful of fries, Oliver pausing with his burger halfway to his mouth and putting it down slowly as he thinks.

“Good,” he goes for the simple answer, “She’s adjusting to being in prison.”

“She thinks my mom is innocent.”

It’s not a question, but a simple statement.

“She…” Oliver trails with a sigh, trying to figure if there’s a way to have this conversation without giving Sin any false hope, even if that might be exactly what she needs right now. “Yes.” He finally decides in defeats. “She’s asked me to take another look at the case, and so as a favor to her, I will.”

He watches Sin carefully for a reaction, and she knows it, so she avoids the eye contact. Instead she focuses on what’s left of her fries and draining her shake of every last drop until finally she can’t ignore him any longer.

“Let me know if you find anything,” she says indifferently, crumpling up her wrappers and making for the trash.

Oliver watches her as she moves through the kitchen, until she gets to the doorway that leads to the bedrooms, and he’s sure that she’s not going to say anything else.

“What do you think?”

She stops in the doorway, almost defeated looking, and leans her shoulder against the wood as she turns to face him with a shrug. “I don’t know,” she admits, “I mean, and maybe I only think this cause she’s my mom, but I just feel like getting into the back of his car and strangling him was kind of morbid to be as out of nowhere as the murder was.”

Oliver nods at that, he had always felt the same thing, truthfully, but the jury never considered that to be enough to maintain Sara’s innocence.

With a shrug Sin continues on her way to her room, leaving Oliver there to rethink what Laurel had said earlier today, and how he should go about dealing with it.

* * *

 

Sara is woken early in the morning by Sawyer to drag her up to medical. Apparently she needs to have her physical up to date before they can put her in the chair, which she argues is pointless since they’ll be giving her a last minute check up the night before anyway. Sawyer actually agrees with her but procedure is procedure and so she tells her to just look at it as an extra half hour outside of the hole.

“You don’t even have to be chained,” The guard went on as the two of them arrived in the medical office and she pulled out her keys.

“Wow it really is my lucky day,”

Sawyer smirks at the comment and finishes with the locks just as the doctor is entering the office.

“Hello Maggie, how are you?” He greets Sawyer with what Sara can tell is actually merely a polite, obligational question, but somehow it comes off as more with that drawl of his voice.

“Fine Snart, how are you?” Ok, maybe it wasn’t meant to be innocent, since Sawyer barely even glanced in his direction when she returned the greeting and her voice held a small undercut of malic.

It’s quiet for the remaining few seconds that Sawyer is in the room, and once she’s gone Sara fixes her gaze curiously on Snart.

“Everything ok between you two?” She asks and Snart snorts.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” He assures her with a smirk, “I’m not exactly Maggie’s type.”

Sara nods at that. She hadn’t actually believed that he and Sawyer were together in a romantic sense, as she’s been here long enough to have it figured out that Sawyer is gay. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what actually might be going on between them.

“So, Sara Lance, I’m seeing your sister up here in a few hours.” Snart pulls her from her thoughts and she crinkles her brow at his words.

“Why?”  
His eyes flick up to meet hers, a glimmer of what she could swear is confusion passing through them.  
“Her insulin,” The answer only begs more questions in Sara’s mind, but ultimately she decides that it might be in Laurel’s best interest to play along and so she closes her parted lips and nods.

“Right,” she says, “I should’ve put that together.”

For a moment Snart looks suspicious of her, but he soon turns back to her charts and Sara mentally files away the new information for later.

“So, I know that you’ve only been in here once before and that you had Dr. Snow that time, unfortunately she’s busy right now, so you’re stuck with me.”

Sara smirks at that, his light attempt at humor appreciated.

“I think I can deal with that.” It’s his turn to smirk now, and Sara returns it with a genuine smile.

 

* * *

 

“What?” Helena exclaims in shock during visitation when one of her contacts on the outside told her that he had received a package that morning, a package containing two things: her father’s watch, and a badly folded paper crane.

“Someone knows where you’re old man is,” John, her contact, says darkly and she nods, the gears already turning in her head. “Any idea who?”

“Oh yeah.”

* * *

 

“Why can’t you get this stuff at medical?” Dig asks, not exactly judgmentally but… cautiously. She normally doesn’t ask questions when acquiring prescriptions for people; she’d rather NOT know what the crazies in this place are using drugs to escape or, even worse, their methods of taking them. But the new girl had come to her with such an odd request, for a drug that’s meant to block insulin production in the body and, as far as Lyla knows, can’t get her high. Even if it can there are surely plenty of more common methods for that, so her interest was peaked.

“Medical thinks I’m diabetic, they’re giving me insulin shots.” Laurel responds with a mischievous, not to mention slightly proud, smile, and Lyla laughs the way she laughs to avoid an in depth conversation with Cupid.

“You’re a whole new level of crazy, aren’t you?” She asks and Laurel’s smile turns to amusement.

“Depends who you ask,” she admits, “So you can get it for me?”

Lyla nods, “Easy,” she promises, “But you’re going to owe me.”

“Understood,” Laurel assures her, “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.” It doesn’t sound suggestive, so Lyla nods.

“Alright, you’ll have it by tomorrow-”

“This afternoon,” Laurel interrupts quickly, and all Lyla can do is laugh until she realizes that the other woman is serious.

“No,” she says firmly, “Not that quick.”

“Dig, I need it before they take me up this afternoon.”

“Well then you should’ve thought of this yesterday.” Lyla has met a lot of interesting, not to mention certifiably insane, people over the course of her life; but never any who could manage to plead whilst sounding as firm as Laurel Lance.

No matter, she would still stand her ground.

The two of them were locked into a stare down, which Laurel was going to lose, when Helena Bertinelli showed up.

“Hey,” she called to get their attention, “Go negotiate prices with someone else Dig, I need the new girl.”

Breaking the eye contact Lyla nods at Helena, before walking past Laurel.

“Tomorrow,” she mutters firmly on her way by, making sure she’s gone before the new girl can even try calling her back.

Laurel scowls as Dig marches away, but hides her frustration behind a knowing smile as she faces Helena, who looks as though she might actually be impressed if she weren’t so busy being pissed.

“Any thoughts on PI?” She asks giddily and it almost looks like it’s killing the other woman on the inside as she approaches and grabs her but the fabric on the chest of her jumpsuit, pulling her close.

“You start this afternoon.” She growls, releasing Laurel with a hard shove and marching away without another word.

This leaves Laurel standing there, smiling to herself.

 

* * *

 

Luckily, PI starts every day right after yard time, meaning that her appointment with medical has now been pushed back by a few hours, so Laurel has a little more time to figure out what she’s going to do about that blood test. Also luckily, Sara is already employed in PI, so that’s one less thing for Laurel to convince someone to do. Not so luckily, however, is that she isn’t exactly Sara’s favorite person in the world right now and so when the PI group is led to a locker room to change into their blue, strictly for work, jumpsuits they’re watched by Sawyer and another female guard but honestly they are still allowed plenty of space for their own conversations.

Something Sara takes full advantage of.

“What. The. _Hell?”_ She deadpans in a furiously calm voice as she and Laurel tuck themselves into the back of the locker area to change. “Between the bank and leaving Sin under Ollie’s care, I have enough questions for you as it is, but now I get brought in for my physical this morning and the doctor tells me that you’re going up there every day for _insulin shots_?” She seethes, “What is your game Laurel? What are you-?” She stops short, her jaw hanging open when her older sister slips her arms free of her jumpsuit and she sees the intricate designs of greyish-blue that dominate her skin.

Laurel notices her staring, and despite that this is the first time Sara has presented her with an opportunity to get a word in, she stands there and lets her stare for a moment.

“I’m getting you out of here,” she whispers just barely loud enough for the younger blonde to hear, certainly not loud enough for anyone to overhear. Actually, she’s not entirely sure that Sara _did_ hear her, because she’s still standing there slack jawed, her eyes glued to the tattoos, and then just when Laurel is about to dare and repeat herself…

“What?”

She smirks at this and drops her jumpsuit the rest of the way, thinking it almost comical the way Sara’s eyes fall briefly to her legs as if to make sure she hasn’t covered those in ink as well.

“I represented the head of a construction company a few months after you were arrested, the same company who last renovated Iron Heights. We saw all of their recent projects.”

Sara was quiet for a minute, processing the information. “You’ve seen the blueprints,” she finally gasps and Laurel can’t help the tiny smile on her lips as she tugs on the hem of her undershirt.

“Even better,” she promises, pulling the tank top over her head to reveal the rest of her tattoo. “I’ve got them on me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this chapter took a little longer than usual to get up! Real life got in the way, along with me watching Stranger Things, but I finally managed to finish this chapter!


	5. And so it Begins

Oliver knows this is insane.

He’s gone through Sara’s case a hundred times over, but he always comes up drawing the same conclusion that the court did; Sara killed his father.

The only thing is that it just doesn’t fit. The evidence, oh the evidence all fits nicely. But he knows Sara. He’s known Sara his whole life; she isn’t a killer.

With a sigh he drags his hands over his face, exhaustion and hopelessness creeping over him as he scans the papers for the hundredth time in two years. He doesn’t really expect anything is going to jump out at him, nothing has before, so he’s about to abandon his search for what isn’t here and go to bed.

But then, as fate would have it, something actually does catch his eye.

It’s the DVD; the security footage that he’s always refused to watch because it would mean watching his own father’s murder. Laurel always understood that, so she was the one who watched it during the initial investigation. He still doesn’t want to watch it, at all, but they’re completely out of options.

With a heavy sigh Oliver opens up the drawer of his desk and rifles through it until he finds the DVD attachment for his laptop and, much sooner than he’d like, the security footage is coming up on his screen.

It’s a parking garage, empty save for his father’s car. He inhales a shaky breath as he watches Sara walk into view of the camera and then into the back of the car. He waits anxiously, furiously tapping his foot against the floor as the time ticks down two minutes; the amount of time Sara has always claimed she waited in the car for. Sure enough, two minutes and only a handful of seconds pass before the door of the backseat opens again and Sara walks out. Desperate for something to go on, he tries to see into the car. But he can’t. The parking spot is far enough away from the camera and at enough of an angle that he can’t see through the windshield or the driver’s window. There’s no way to confirm Sara’s claim that she was the only one in the car.

The evidence all fits together nicely.

Maybe a little too nicely.

 

* * *

 

When Helena approached Lisa about joining PI just a day after bringing Laurel on, well Lisa knew it was because the “mafia princess” is suspicious of her cellmate and is hoping she might be able to tell her what the blonde’s game is. She’s being paranoid, of course, but Lisa still accepted the offer because she’ll take any time out of her cell that she can get. So now she’s moping the cafeteria floor and so far the only thing even slightly odd about her cellmate is that she’s currently talking with her sister, which isn’t even THAT odd. They seem to be arguing about something, and then Laurel walks away off to a corner of the large room while Sara retreats the opposite way in a huff, naturally peaking Lisa’s curiosity. She decides to take her mop and follow after Laurel, maybe find out why the two of them never seem to be on good terms.

But she stops short when she realizes her cellmate has opened the fuse box and she’s slipping something inside. She can’t quite tell what is. It’s small, rectangular, black, and…

_“A phone.”_

Lisa realizes with a drop of her heart that the object is a cellphone. Laurel turns around just then and Lisa scrambles to advert her eyes and at least make it look like she’s moping, though she isn’t really sure she succeeds. Nevertheless Laurel passes by her without so much as a second glance and once she’s gone Lisa is in a debate with herself over what to do about what she’s just seen.

“Hey!” Sawyer’s loud voice suddenly calls out, “Stay where I can see you.”

Well, looks like she’s going to have some time to figure it out. She picks up her mop and heads back towards the group, her mind still focused on the phone.

 

* * *

 

Laurel managed to come up with a plan for her blood test while she was working PI. Well, a rough plan anyway. It isn’t her best plan ever, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Mick leads her into the medical room and leans himself against the edge of a table.

“Don’t trust me?” Laurel asks tauntingly, kicking her feet back and fourth like a bored child and Mick grunts at her.

“I don’t think you’re dumb enough to do anything stupid,” He claims before huffing out a sigh. “Nah, some idiot got caught letting a prisoner wait in here alone the other day, so now a guard has to wait with you, at least until the heat from the warden dies down.”

Laurel nods at that. She’s starting to see what Lisa was talking about when she said Mick is easy to get along with, so long as you behave. Of course she isn’t exactly sure how much she’ll be able to behave as her time in here goes on, as the escape gets closer.

“So you do trust me?” She asks with mock innocence and Mick glares at her, his eyes silently asking if she’s really just asked him that question.

“I didn’t say that.” He tells her firmly, with just the tiniest glint of amusement in his eyes, letting her know he most certainly doesn’t trust her. She can respect that though; he shouldn’t trust her.

The sound of the door opening interrupts her thoughts, and Snart walks in and gives a nod to Mick for him to leave and so he does.

“Heard you started on PI?” The doctor drawls conversationally as he takes out his charts, glancing briefly at her when he does. “Don’t know how you managed that.”

“Pity,” She lies easily, “Sara works PI, and with her set to take the chair at the end of the month, no one saw any harm in giving me a few extra hours with my sister before she’s gone.”

Snart nods, a bit uneasily, “Right,” he says and begins laying out his equipment, including a glucose meter.

Laurel eyes the machine anxiously, still not entirely confident that her plan is going to work. She’ll need to time this perfectly, and even if she manages that she’ll be praying Snart doesn’t just redo the test.

He pulls up his stool and with a deep breath she holds out her hand, offering her fingertip for him to wipe clean.

“Nervous?” He asks and she gives a halfhearted laugh.

“Just going to be really annoyed if you tell me I’ve been pricking my finger all these years for no reason.”

He smirks at her while finishing with the wipe. “Like I said, last time was probably just a fluke of the machine. So don’t get your hopes up.”

“Never,” she promises, and then it’s time. He takes the pen-like device, holds it to her finger, his own thumb hovering over the end and she knows that she’s only going to have one shot at this.

So, a split second later, just as he pushes down on the pen, she jumps.

“Sorry,” she hastily apologizes when he looks skeptically up at her, “I think I felt a bug on my neck.”

He looks like he doesn’t believe her, but he takes the pen away all the same to reveal a small, only half punctured, hole on the pad of her finger. Still, there is some blood emerging from it, and so he takes his testing strip and squeezes at the edges of the wound with a little force in order to get a sufficient amount for the strip. She holds her breath as the little machine in the palm of his hand calculates her fate. Her mind locked on that article she read on the testing of blood with Type One diabetes; squeeze the site of the finger prick too hard and you can end up with a false count.

She can only hope Snart will overlook that detail.

“Well, you’re definitely diabetic.” He remarks, taking away the test before she even realizes that it’s displayed it’s ruling, but she’s relieved to hear it’s apparently shown him the results she needed it to.

“Told you,” She manages to get out, though it lacks her usual teasing, and he eyes her suspiciously; which makes her think twice about having said anything.

“Sorry I doubted you,” he finally says, though she can see it in his eyes that she’s far from being in the clear. She’s going to need to be more careful with what she says to him.

 

* * *

 

Rubbing at her wrists as Sawyer unlocks her shackles Sara is seriously debating whether or not she’s really going to play along with Laurel’s game. It’s crazy, really, even if she has hidden the blueprints to the prison within a tattoo encompassing half of her body. There are so many things that could go wrong, so many little things that could fail to line up. She knows that this will only be the first of many stunts, and she has the power right now to stop it before it starts. But, as Sawyer unlocks her ankles, she thinks about how Laurel is already in here. She can’t change that, and she can’t change that if they don’t try and run she’ll be dead in just a few weeks. She doesn’t exactly have a plethora of options.

“Assuming my daughter ever comes back for a visit, which I seriously doubt she will, what would it cost to not be shackled when I see her?” She asks just as Sawyer is about to leave her hole, but she turns back to acknowledge the question.

“You know the protocol when you’re out of your cell,” she says firmly and Sara sighs.

“I’d still be cuffed,” she clarifies, “But the other day was the first time I’ve seen her in over two years, and I could barely get my hand up enough to grab the phone.” She pleads and Sawyer glances away, like she’s actually considering it. “Please, I’ve never caused any trouble, I’m trying to help you by telling you something, and all I’m asking in return is that I not look like an animal in front of my daughter.”

It’s still another few seconds before Sawyer looks her in the eyes again, and sighs. “What do you have?”

“Lisa Snart,” Sara replies readily, “During PI I saw her stuff a cell phone into the fuse box in the cafeteria.” Sawyer rolls her eyes with a sigh, “I’m serious!”

“Ok,” The guard replies in a tone that is very close to patronizing. “I’ll check it out.”

With that she walks herself out of the hole and Sara releases the heavy breath she hadn’t realized she was holding; Laurel better know what she’s doing.

 

* * *

 

Perched on the edge of her bunk Lisa waits with baited breath for Laurel to get back from medical. She has more than a few questions for her cellmate, starting with how did she even get a cellphone into Iron Heights in the first place. Not to mention that she’s managed to hold onto it for a couple of days, only to hide it in the cafeteria fuse box of all places.

Right at that moment she hears the turn of a lock, and her eyes are drawn to where Mick is returning Laurel to their cell. She now only has to wait for him to leave, and somehow that wait feels even longer. But soon he’s gone, and Laurel is settled onto the bunk below her, most likely reading her magazine for the hundredth time.

She leaps down from the bed and turns to glare at her cellmate, who is indeed reading her magazine as expected. She’s silent as she watches her, waiting for the blonde to notice her standing there. It doesn’t take long, only a few seconds, and then Laurel is glancing up at her over the edge of her pages.

“Can I help you?” She asks.

“I know about the phone.” Lisa firmly states, her hands planted on her hips as Laurel knits her brows together in confusion.

“Phone?”

“Cut the crap Laurel,” She snaps before Laurel can go on denying it. “I saw you stash a phone in the fuse box.”

For a moment, Laurel looks taken back, like she wasn’t expecting Lisa to be so forward with her accusation. Ordinarily Lisa might take pride in gaining such a reaction from someone, but right now she’s far too interested in getting answers.

Unfortunately, that might have to wait.

The sounds of heavy boots are echoing down the corridor and on instinct Lisa turns, while Laurel rises, to look. It’s Mick and Sawyer who are approaching, and even long before they arrive the two women know the guards are going to stop outside their cell.

They do, of course, and while Sawyer looks to be frustrated Mick is frowning in disappointment; honestly Lisa isn’t sure which of them she’s more afraid of.

“What’s going on?” She demands when Mick takes out a key and lets both himself and Sawyer into the cell.

“Stand still,” Sawyer orders automatically and before Lisa can say anything the female guard is patting her down and Mick is tearing their cell apart.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Laurel demands furiously as Mick flips her mattress.

“Got a tip that Snart here stashed a phone while you were on PI, didn’t find anything in the cafeteria so we’re checking here.” Sawyer replies as she moves on to searching Laurel.

“What?!” Lisa shouts in total disbelief. “A tip from who? How the hell would I even get a phone in here?”

“You inmates find some pretty creative ways to smuggle things,” Sawyer replies as she finishes with Laurel before directing her attention to Mick. “Anything?”

He shakes his head, “Place is clean.” He declares and Lisa exhales a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. “What do you want to do?” He asks Sawyer and suddenly Lisa is nervous all over again.

“Leave ‘em.” The other guard replies with a sigh, “I’ll deal with the tip.”

Laurel suddenly looks nervous, Lisa notes, but if the guards catch that they don’t say so. They exit the cell and slam the door closed behind them, Mick locking it up whilst Sawyer heads on her way down the corridor. Laurel is quick to start cleaning up the mess Mick left behind, but Lisa remains firmly where she stands until she’s sure both guards are gone.

“What the hell?” She snarls in a deathly calm voice. “You hide a phone then you pin it on me?”

“I needed to know I could trust you,” Laurel says distractedly as she begins an attempt at sliding her mattress back onto her bunk.

“You’re not even sorry?” Lisa splutters, bewildered mostly by the fact that Laurel is admitting what she’s done, especially considering she was denying all knowledge of the phone before the guards showed up.  
“Sorry,” she says, though she clearly doesn’t mean it, and Lisa huffs.

“Why were you testing if you can trust me?” She asks, her voice more curious than angry now, and for the first time Laurel glances over her shoulder to look at her.

“Tell you tomorrow after PI,” She promises and ordinarily this lack of answers would only anger Lisa. But it’s been a long day what with the start of PI work and now this. She’s tired, and waiting until tomorrow means she just might get her hands on that phone.

“Whatever,” she grumbles and begins to help with the putting back together of the cell.


	6. Who can you Trust?

As he sits in his parked car Oliver wonders to himself if he is really about to do what he is, if he is really about to let himself fall down the same rabbit hole Laurel did. Her opinion had always been the same as his regarding Sara’s arrest, she found it difficult to swallow but believed the evidence.

That is, until recently.

Two months ago she went in to visit Sara and to break the news that her court appeal had been denied. Oliver still isn’t sure what exactly happened during that visit, but Laurel began acting strange afterwards. She was famous for spending long nights in the office before Sara’s arrest, but when that happened and she took guardianship of Sin as a result she tried to cut back on the long hours. For the past two years she has made an effort to be home by suppertime, even if it did mean occasionally bringing her work home with her. But after her last visit with Sara nobody had seen much of her, not even Sin. They didn’t think much of it, figured she was trying the appeal again and combing through every shred of evidence three times over. But then she knocked over a bank, got herself thrown into Iron Heights, and even though they don’t want to admit it he and Sin both have a pretty good guess as to what she’s trying to accomplish.

The thing is, deep down, Oliver knows Sara’s innocent. Something is wrong here, very wrong, and Laurel’s last-ditch solution to the problem is hardly a solution at all. If he starts investigating this he’ll fall down that same hole of obsession she did, the one that left him in charge of Sin. If something happens to him, Sin doesn’t have anybody else to go to. She _can’t_ lose him. But, if he doesn’t try, she _will_ lose her mother. Even if Laurel’s crazy plan, whatever the hell it is, does work she and Sara will be on the run. Sin won’t be able to see her again maybe for years, if she’ll ever be able to see her again at all. There’s no winning here. If he tries and fails Sin loses everything, but if he doesn’t try at all Sara dies.

Well, go big or go home.

With a final sigh of a decision Oliver steps out of his car with the DVD in hand and walks up to the door of the tech shop, hoping that he isn’t about to embark on a mission that will make anyone’s situation worse.

“Oliver Queen,” The man behind the counter looks up and greets him with a bright smile on his face and a chuckle in his voice.

Oliver matches the smile easily, happily, and for a split second he actually forgets that he’s here trying to prove that his friend didn’t murder his father.

“Curtis Holt,” He acknowledges as his old friend comes around the counter and gives him a hug. “Glad to see you got your start up going.” He really is glad to see it; Curtis was always the best tech consultant back in the days of Queen Consolidated. After his father’s death the company went through a lot of changes, even before Moira ultimately sold to Merlin Global, and Curtis was one of the unfortunate many who had to be let go.

“Well it’s not perfect,” Curtis claims, even through his blush. “I mean I just had to get the air-conditioner fixed, there are still more than a few bugs with my latest invention, and-”

“Curtis,” Oliver cuts him off, he means well but if no one stops him Curtis could very easily go off on his tangent for hours.

“Right,” he says, refocusing. “You needed my help with something?”

Oliver nods, and the next thing that he knows the two of them are heading into Curtis’s small workshop and the other man is loading the security footage into his computer.

“That’s it?” Curtis asks once it’s over, and Oliver sighs as he leans more heavily on the back of his friend’s chair.

“It’s not much,” He concedes, “But I was hoping you might be able to tell if somebody edited it at all.”

“I can try,” Curtis says, “But if it’s at a bad angle it’s at a bad angle. Still, you mentioned on the phone that Sara’s claiming she was the only one in the car?” He asks, turning his neck just in time to catch Oliver nodding. “Ok, well you’re dad’s body wasn’t found until the morning after this, meaning you have six hours unaccounted for right here. If Sara is innocent, then both he and the real killer are probably somewhere on those six hours of tape.”

 

* * *

 

Sitting along the rows of their usual table in the prison cafeteria, Rosa Dillon was frowning into the green mush that passes for peas in Iron Heights, stirring them around her tray in swirling motions.

“What’s your deal?” Helena asks once she’s finally had enough of watching her second in command pout at her lunch like a child.

“I can’t believe you just gave in to the new girl,” Rosa wines and it’s all Helena can do to suppress a laugh. “What?”

“Keep your enemies close,” she says with a devilish grin, “And your enemies closer.”

 

* * *

 

Once yard time is a little more than half over and they’re sure that the guards are paying little attention to Sara, Laurel makes her way over to her sister.

“You’re lucky they didn’t search me.” The younger blonde all but growls as she slips her older sister’s items discreetly through the fence.

“I’m little surprised they didn’t confront you about lying.” Laurel admits but Sara only shrugs.

“I’ll be dead in a few weeks, you were right to bet on them assuming I’m desperate enough to lie, which I apparently am.” She huffs and Laurel only smirks as she begins backing away from the fence, her belongings secured safely in the sleeves of her long sleeved undershirt and she reaches her arms up in a stretch.

“Desperate times,” she echoes, “Desperate measures.”

 

* * *

 

After leaving Curtis’s shop, Oliver drove himself straight over to the building where his father had last been seen alive. The building is still the home to the large security firm his father had been considering an investment in at the time of his death, and the head of the operation was more than willing to talk with him.

“I have to say,” The man in question, a Mr. Harry Wells says as they walk through the halls of the building. “I am surprised that it took you so long to come to us Mr. Queen, although I’m assuming that’s because your friend Laurel was so thorough during the initial investigation.”

Oliver forces a smile as the two of them pass by a repairman working on a heater, something about Wells’ accusing tone rubbing him the wrong way.

“Laurel does good work,” He says, “But with Sara set to be executed in just a few weeks we want to make sure we didn’t miss anything, especially with Sara still pleading innocent to everyone who says otherwise.”

Wells frowns, and looks like he’s about to say something regarding Sara’s guilt, but instead he only keeps moving down the hall. “This way,” are his only words.

“I’m assuming you’re here looking for the security footage of your father’s death,” he says as they enter a large room filled with computer monitors and data towers.

“Laurel still has a copy from the original investigation,” He says, “I was actually hoping you could show me footage of what happened between Sara leaving and the police finding the body.”

Wells’ face falls, if that’s even possible, and he looks at Oliver with an almost a warning gleam in his eye. “You want to watch six hours of an empty parking garage?” He asks and suddenly Oliver is finding himself believing it just a little more that something might be going on here, something that someone is trying to hide.

“A woman’s life is hanging in the balance,”

“A murderer’s life,” Wells says quickly, trying to shut this down before it gets anywhere, but Oliver knows that tactic all too well.

“We just want to be sure,” He says calmly, hardly unnerved by Wells’ reluctance to indulge him. “Robert Queen was my father, nobody wants his killer dead more than I do-”

“That’s not what the tabloids say.” Wells interrupts, and Oliver has to bite his tongue for a moment, hoping he’s able to keep Wells from seeing the nerve that he’s struck a nerve, but he knows it’s in vein. “When was the last time you spoke with your mother, Mr. Queen?” The older man continues to press, knowing he’s found a grip on the lawyer. “The original trial? Does she know you’re now the guardian of the very girl you have spent over a decade denying as your daughter? Does she even know you’re here?” He’s quiet then, for a second, purposely allowing Oliver the time to process his words. “I bet it wouldn’t surprise her.”

“The tape,” Oliver says firmly, in fact he almost growls it.

Wells regards him for a moment, but eventually he relents with a sigh and starts combing the extensive memory of the computer until he finally, after nearly twenty silent minutes, comes up with a flash drive and Oliver watches him download the appropriate files.

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to find, Mr. Queen.” He says as Oliver takes the drive.

“Hopefully confirmation, thank you Mr. Wells.” He says and with that he lets himself out of the room, begins walking down the hall, and then…

“It’s a lie.”

The voice stops him, and Oliver turns to see that of all possible people it’s the repairman who is talking to him.

“Excuse me?” He asks; the man is barely a man, probably only a few years older than Sin, if he had to guess. In fact he’s probably just graduated high school this past year or so.

The man, or boy rather, looks over both his shoulders twice, almost paranoid, then steps closer. “You were talking about Sara Lance?” He asks and Oliver furrows his brow. It doesn’t surprise him that the boy overheard his conversation while he and Wells were walking down the hall, but he still has no idea where this is going. “Whatever’s on that drive he just gave you, it ain’t the real footage.”

“What are you talking about?” Oliver questions, almost wanting to laugh at the deadly serious face on the kid. “Do you even know what this is about?”

The kid nods, “My mom used to work here,” he explains before looking over his shoulder again. “Meet me at the bus station tomorrow morning at eight-thirty if you want the real tape.”

Oliver wants to question him again, or laugh at him, but he turns on his heel without another word, grabs his wrenches, and speed-walks out of the hallway as if staying one more second will cost him his life.

 

* * *

 

“Ok, we’ve made it through PI, what is your deal?” Lisa demands the instant that all guards are out of earshot and it’s just Laurel and herself in their cell. “And after all this, you had better let me use that phone.”

“You’re not much for patience, are you?” Laurel asks as she unbuttons the top half of her jumpsuit and rolls it down to her waist and pulls off her long sleeved undershirt, leaving the top half of her clad only in her prison issued sports bra.

“Not when I’m being strung along, no.” Lisa rebuts, her eyes suddenly drawn to Laurel’s chest.

There is an odd shaped bulge in her bra, only noticeable now because two layers of baggy clothing no longer cover it. Reaching into her bra Laurel reveals with a smirk that the lump is the phone.

Then she breaks it in half.

The first emotion to rush through Lisa’s face is heartbreak, because she could’ve used that phone to call Cisco. The next isn’t an emotion really so much as it is a thought, and that thought is that she’s living with a psychopath. The third comes when Laurel is suddenly shoving the two broken halves of the phone into her hands and the realization dawns on Lisa; she really is living with a psychopath.

“It’s soap,” she observes dumbly.

In each of her hands is, indeed, a chunk of broken soap that’s been turned black by what appears to be some sort of makeup, probably liquid eye shadow.

“I told you, I needed to know I can trust you.” Laurel says and now Lisa’s pissed, wondering what kind of sick joke this is.

“For what?” She bites out; best to know what Laurel is going on about before she fully commits to the conclusion that the woman belongs in the psych ward, after all.

With an almost evil smirk the blonde meets her eyes, and lowers her voice. “We’re busting out of here.”


	7. Complications

It’s a good thing, Laurel thinks, that the hallway security cameras can’t actually see into the cells. If they could, well then the guards currently watching the monitors would be racing down here.

Initially she thought that it would be a good idea to tell Lisa of her plan to bust them out of here, but as she’s standing here now with one hand over her cellmate’s mouth to keep her from screaming out and the other around her waist to try and control her thrashing… well she’s starting to reconsider.

But it was necessary, less than desirable results aside.

“Hey, hey shut up.” She whispers as calmly as she possibly can, not even sure if Lisa can hear her over her own muffled screaming. “Lisa, put a sock in it. You’re going to-hey!” She yelps more out of surprise than actual pain, though she doesn’t let up on her grip. “No biting.” She scolds with a roll of her eyes. She can practically feel Lisa rolling her own eyes, but she must sense that Laurel isn’t going to let go unless she feels like escalating this into a fight, because her shouts start to die down and her body eventually stills. “Ok,” Laurel says, “I’m going to let you go now, are you going to keep quiet?” She asks cautiously and Lisa nods, “Ok.”

With that Laurel carefully removes her hands from Lisa, and the second that she does the dark haired woman spins around on her heel with a snarl on her face.

“First off,” she whispers loudly, furiously. “You don’t EVER put your hands on me like that again!” Laurel nods at that, “And second, are you insane?!” She demands, “You can’t break out of this place, and even if you could you would need help on the outside. You would need money, transportation, disguises-”

“I’ll have them,” Laurel cuts her off with the assurance. “All of the pieces are in place, and as for actually getting out of here…” She hesitates for a moment, not wanting to reveal the key to her plans to Lisa if she’s uncertain that she’s on board or not. “I’ve got it covered.” She says and the dawning look of realization on Lisa’s face practically shouts that she is only now seeing that Laurel is completely, 100%, serious.

“No,” she says without room for argument. “No way, I’m a free woman in sixteen months, I ain’t screwing that up by being involved in some crazy escape plan. I’m putting in for a cell transfer and when you get caught, I never knew anything about your crazy plan, got it?”

“Got it,” Laurel replies disbelievingly, folding her arms across her chest. “Only problem is, from what I hear, it’s not exactly easy to get a cell transfer around here.”

“It is when your cellmate attacks you-”

“You’ll never convince them of that.” Laurel cuts off before Lisa can even put thought into the idea, she knows it’s a lie she’ll never be able to pull off, but it’s still best not to let her try.

“You sure about that?” She asks with a warning glare, “Because you have a bite mark on your hand that says otherwise.”

Her eyes widen and Laurel looks down at her palm, where faint red lines were already beginning to trace out the imprint of Lisa’s teeth.

 

* * *

 

Oliver stifles a yawn as he accepts his coffee and heads out the door of the shop. He should’ve gotten a shot of espresso or something, he thinks, as he makes his way down the busy city street. He spent the entire night watching the six hours of tape Wells gave him, and it was six hours of nothing. The only person to show up on the tape was the police officer that had been called on the tip of the car sitting there untouched for an unreasonable amount of time. He’d had a feeling that was what he would find, of course, and his brief interaction with the kid working on the heater wasn’t very reassuring.

_“Speaking of the kid,”_ Oliver thought to himself, _“Where is he?”_

He had made it to the bus depot, exactly why he wasn’t sure but whatever, and he was keeping his eyes peeled for the kid. He was just about to leave, when someone bumped him.

He turned around; ready to tell the probable thief off, but he couldn’t tell which passerby had just robbed him. Deciding it wasn’t worth it he stuck his hand into his pocket to check if his wallet were still there or not.

It was.

Thinking this odd he decides to check his other pockets, until he found his fingers brushing against something that hadn’t been there before. Crinkling his brow he pulls the item from his jacket pocket to find that it’s a thumb drive.

With one final glance around he leaves the depot, never once noticing the two men sitting on the bench reading newspapers.

 

* * *

 

“How was your visit with your mother?”

Sin huffs, thinking about how much she would rather be in study hall right now as opposed to sitting in front of Mr. Olsen’s desk, twirling one of her many rings around her finger as he shows her no mercy in his mission to get her to reconnect with her mother.

“Fine,” she answers simply, “She didn’t tell me who my dad is, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Did you ask?”

He must see it on her face, in the way her fingers pause their activity before silently resuming, because his frown deepens.

“Sin,” He starts again, “Your mom is the only person who knows who your father is, and she’s going to be gone soon. If you ever want to know who he is-”

“What if I don’t?” She snaps and he stops, freezes mid sentence, and just stares at her for a minute.

“If you don’t mind my asking Sin, why wouldn’t you want to know?”

She huffs out a long sigh, finally meeting his eyes and stopping with the distraction to herself. “Things like that are a lot easier when you’re a kid and you think everything is good in the world. The only thing she would ever tell me about my dad is that, well one he isn’t Oliver, but two is that he’s dead.”

Mr. Olsen leans forward, intrigued. Sin has mentioned this to him before, once, when she was angry over it and had the idea that maybe her father was only dead to her mother and she was just refusing to share his identity.

“Ok, do you believe that?” He asks cautiously and with one shoulder and a considering look in her eyes, Sin shrugs.

“I was never sure,” she finally says, “I did at first, but she would never tell me anything about what he was like. I thought maybe he just didn’t want me and she didn’t want to admit it, you know?” She asks, “Then a couple years ago I learned what a one night stand is, and I thought maybe that was what happened. You know maybe she doesn’t even know who he is and thought I was too young to understand that.”

“Ok,” Mr. Olsen says, “Have you ever asked her about any of this?”

Sin shakes her head, “I learned pretty quick that she doesn’t like talking about him.” She answers, “When I first learned about paternity tests I asked about that, she explained to me how they actually work. That was the first time I asked about Oliver, but that was it.”

“So you did, at one point, want to know who your father is?” She nods, “Can you tell me what changed?”

She looks down to her lap at his question, fiddling with her rings again, before she finally lets out a heavy sigh.

“I’m not a little kid anymore,” she begins slowly, almost fearfully. “I know about… things.”

“Ok…” Olsen drawls, “What do you mean? What kinds of things?”

“Things like… like the rumors about Oliver. How when Oliver brought his girlfriend’s sister on a boat the whole school talked. How the boat crashed and when my mom was rescued three years later she had a two-year-old daughter, the whole city talked. I can figure that someone must have wanted to give him a paternity test, but my mom never let them. I know that she’s sworn on her life that he isn’t my father, but if she really has nothing to hide in that test, then why wouldn’t she put the rumors to rest?”

“So,” Olsen begins, “You believe that Oliver _is_ your father?” He asks but she looks away again.

“I also know that siblings share DNA, that teenage girls and older men sometimes end up in bed together, and that my mom is in jail for murdering Oliver’s father.” Let the record show that this is the first time she’s ever spoken her, rather disturbing, theory aloud, and judging by Olsen’s face he thinks it’s as crazy as she does.

But, unfortunately, it makes sense.

“Hold up,” Olsen finally says, “You think that Robert Queen… was your father?”

“He was on the boat with my mom,” she answers, “He asked to talk to her alone one day and she killed him, obviously they had some kind of bad blood.”

Olsen is quiet for a minute, processing through the theory he has just been pitched and trying to figure out a way to respond to it.

“Your mom still hasn’t confessed to killing Robert Queen,” he finally says and Sin snorts.

“You think she didn’t?”

“Do you think that she did?” He counters her disgusted accusation and it’s almost comforting to him when she looks down at her lap instead of answering. “Cindy,” he says firmly, getting her to look up and meet his gaze. “You need to talk to your mom about this.”

She’s quiet; she almost looks scared, like she wants to cry. “It sounds so messed up.” She finally squeaks out and Olsen nods.

“It does,” he admits, “But it’s just a theory. You don’t know what Mr. Queen wanted to talk to your mother about that day, your families had been friends for years, it could’ve been anything. You need to talk to your mother Sin, before it’s too late.”

She’s still avoiding his eyes, but she nods, and that’s probably as good as he is going to get.

 

* * *

 

Getting a cell transfer, unfortunately, turned out to be a lot easier for Lisa than Laurel had originally thought it was going to be. Even with the bite mark on her hand fading Lisa had managed to get Mick to talk with the warden and move her out of her cell that night. Laurel can’t help but notice Mick glaring at her the entire time that Lisa is gathering up her things, looking like if he weren’t on duty the two of them would be having a very colorful discussion.

“I said I was sorry,” she murmurs lowly as Lisa gathers up the last of her things and folds her mattress over to keep it all together, if she’s noticed that her toothpaste is missing she hasn’t said anything.

Mick’s glare hardens, and Lisa’s eyes roll. “Don’t care, I’m not living with someone who’s going to attack me.”

Well, at least she isn’t going to spill about the break out.

With the last of her things gathered Mick escorts Lisa out of the cell and slams it shut behind them, making Laurel jump a little.

All she can do is pray that she won’t be assigned a new cellmate.

 

* * *

 

Another six hour tape, and three hours in it’s looking like it’s going to be another dead end. Admittedly the only reason that Oliver is still watching is because the kid went to some pretty secretive lengths to get it to him, and frankly he isn’t sure he trusts Wells. But, he needs to sleep at some point, so it isn’t for the first time tonight that he’s thinking about calling it quits when a person walks into frame.

His jaw drops, because the tape is showing three hours, twenty-one minutes, and fifty-two seconds since Sara exited his father’s car after supposedly killing him, and yet the man on the screen before him is dragging the unmistakable dead body of Robert Queen.

He can’t tell the identity of the man, clad head to toe in all black, including a ski mask covering his face. There’s another black dressed figure walking past him, opening the car door and then helping stuff the body in. He feels sick watching it, but he can’t tear his eyes away. He just keeps watching, until the car door is closed, the men are gone, and his phone is buzzing beside him.

Snapping his attention to the phone he sees that it’s Curtis, and he hesitantly picks up.

“Hello,” he says in a soft, terrified voice.

“Hey,” Curtis replies urgently, completely oblivious to the horror in his friend’s voice. “So I went through every layer of the video with a fine tooth comb, and whoever worked on it is good, like scary good. I almost missed the abnormalities but it turns out that what you can see of the windows was darkened. I managed to lighten them and…Oliver… there was no one there.” He knows this already, based on what he’s just seen, but he still swallows a hard lump in his throat. “Sara’s telling the truth.”

It’s quiet over the line for a moment, each of the men taking in the information even though it isn’t news to either of them, not really. They both knew before the phone call.

“Ok,” Oliver eventually manages, numbly, “Thank you Curtis.” He says and with that he hangs up, the feeling of how real this insane search just became crashing over him like a tidal wave.


	8. I've Got a Message For You

“Lance!”

Laurel is woken early, or earlier than usual, by the gruff sound of Mick’s voice shouting her name. She groans and all but tumbles off of her bed about as unceremoniously as possible.

“Meet your new roommate,” she hasn’t even fully stood up yet, her blonde hair is still hanging like a curtain in her eyes, but she can still hear the evil sort of joy in the guard’s words even over the sound of him opening the cell and shoving someone inside.

It’s the skinny, dark haired woman from her transport; the one who had been rambling like a crazy person.

“Meet Gideon,” Mick introduces as he closes the cell, brandishing his teeth in a wicked smile. “They just released her from the psych ward, good luck.”

Laurel knows he’s enjoying this, leaving her with a mentally questionable cellmate. She’s figured based on the brief interactions between Snart and Mick she’s seen that the two of them must be friends. The way they nod at each other and a message is passed along, how it’s been Mick more than Sawyer lately escorting inmates up to medical (even after Sawyer and Snart appear to have worked out whatever issues they’d had). So with him being under the impression that she’s attacked Lisa it shouldn’t come as a shock to her that he’s taking joy in the idea of her misery.

“Hi,” She says anxiously as Mick walks away, “I’m Laurel.” She continues, offering Gideon her hand but the other woman only stares at it, then turns on her heel without a word and begins stuffing her mattress up onto Lisa’s abandoned top bunk.

Laurel watches her carefully, warily, remembering the babbling woman from her transport but so far Gideon seems normal. She isn’t rambling about trouble or plans involving some imaginary people. Instead she’s shifting around on her bunk before sliding off of it with a handful of belongings that have no business being on a bed, such as her toothbrush and other toiletries. As she goes about arranging them in their proper places throughout the cell, silently, Laurel decides to take up her usual place of residence on her bunk with the magazine that she only sometimes actually reads.

They remain in a tense quiet like that for a while, the only sounds being those of Gideon moving around the cell and the occasional flipping of Laurel’s pages.

“They’re going to get you, you know?” Gideon’s English accent finally breaks the silence and Laurel lowers her magazine in order to look at her.

“I’m sorry?” She asks, not entirely sure she’s heard correctly.

“You, me, your sister, your old cellmate; they’re going to get to all of us eventually.” She states simply as if it’s a fact.

“Alright…” Laurel drawls, still very confused. “Who exactly are ‘they’?” She asks skeptically and Gideon snorts.

“If I had the answer to that question I wouldn’t be standing here,” She says almost wistfully before her face becomes serious. “Just be careful Laurel, you get them angry enough, and they won’t stop until everyone you love is dead.”

 

* * *

 

Aside from the tape there was one other item on the thumb drive Oliver received from the repairman; a phone number. Sitting alone in his office he’s been debating about calling it for hours now, which is pointless because he’s known the entire time what it is he’s going to choose. He can try and talk himself out of it all he wants. He can try and reason that he’s about to follow the lead of someone who is barely an adult. He can try and say that it isn’t yet too late to forget about all this, but he knows it’s all a lie. He’s going to call, and so it’s with a heavy sigh and a mental question about his sanity in which he finally does.

The phone rings once, but only gets partway through a second ring before he hears the familiar voice on the other end. “Hello?”

“I watched the tape,” he says calmly, “What the hell is going on here?”

“Meet me in the park at one, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“Wait-” Oliver tries to stop the kid from hanging up but it’s too late, all he’s met with is a dial tone.

Uttering a small curse he checks his phone for the time, he only has a half hour.

 

* * *

 

To be perfectly honest, Sara wasn’t expecting that Sin would ever come back for another visit. That’s why she didn’t argue more when Laurel suggested she use the teenager as a bargaining chip when trying to get Sawyer to listen to her about the phone. So it’s understandable that she’s surprised when Sawyer comes for her during visiting hours and leads her down to the phones.

“Shouldn’t have lied to me Lance,” she says as they enter the long hallway and stop at only the first booth. “You’re lucky I’m bringing you out here at all.”

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Sara says, taking her seat and looking back at the guard with much more sincerity in her eyes than she suspects the other woman was expecting. “Thank you, Maggie.” She says and the woman nods.

“Sawyer,” she reminds strictly, “Ten minutes.”

“Thanks,” Sara says before turning to the glass that separates her and her daughter with a smile, struggling a bit to get ahold of the phone with her restraints but it isn’t anything that she can’t manage. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” She asks knowingly, almost teasingly, and Sin shrugs.

“Half day,” it’s a lie, they both know it, but Sara nods like she believes it.

“Ollie visiting Laurel?” She asks and Sin shakes her head.

“He’s got some big case he’s working on, I took the bus here.”

“Got’cha,” Sara replies, “So, what’s going on? You staying out of trouble?”

Sin avoids her eyes and leans back in her chair as much as the phone chord will allow her to.

“Yeah,” she says lowly, almost nervously. “Yeah I’m good. It’s just… uh… Look, I know my dad isn’t a topic that you love talking about, but… he… my dad wasn’t Robert Queen, was he?”

Sara is quiet, dumbstruck, and Sin is watching her with heavy impatience as she awaits an answer.

“What?” The blonde finally manages through a laugh because… what? “No, where did you ever get that idea?”

“Well you’ve always been pretty adamant that it isn’t Oliver, yet you won’t let him take a paternity test-”

“Ok,” Sara cuts her off, the pieces starting to click together inside of her head. “No, Robert Queen was not your father and neither is Oliver. You don’t have any Queen genetics in you, ok?” She asks and Sin nods, still frowning.

“Then whose genetics do I have? Who’s my dad?” She begs, leaning closer to the glass

“It doesn’t matter,” Sara insists, mimicking her daughter’s actions and getting as close to her as the barrier between them will allow. “He’s dead.”

“If he’s dead then why won’t you tell me his name?” Sin continues to plead and Sara let’s out a long sigh, leaning back in her chair and considering her options here for not the first time, or even the second. Sin leans back too; watching silently as the wheels turn in her mother’s head until the older woman finally looks her in the eyes.

“I’ve always planned on telling you,” She begins, and not with words that Sin was expecting to hear. “Once everything got sorted out after the island, I decided that when you turned eighteen I would tell you about your father.” She stops there for a second, they’re both thinking the same thing, and she’s going to have to be the one to say it. “But, it’s not looking like I’m going to be around that long-”

“Mom-”

“So,” she interrupts the soft interruption, “After they… you know… put me in the chair, my belongings are going to be released to you. In those belongings is a letter explaining everything about your father. I was going to ask you to wait until you’re eighteen to read it, but I think I’m gonna trust you to do what you want with it.”

“So…” Sin trails, “I can read it as soon as I get it?”

Sara nods, “If that’s what you want.”

“Then why can’t you just tell me now?” She asks but her mother only smirks at her, even as Sawyer appears behind her.

“It’s all in the letter,” she promises, but of course Sin looks less than thrilled. “Hey,” she says, “I love you, never doubt that, ok?”

Sin looks like she still wants to keep asking questions until she gets a straight answer, but their time is up, so she just nods.

“Love you too.”

All Sara can do is smile at the words as they each hang up their respective phones and Sawyer comes to lead her away. She gets herself up and turns, trying to keep the tears in her eyes at bay but she’s sure that Sawyer’s noticed. She doesn’t say anything about it, but Sara wouldn’t care if she did.

It’s been too long since Sin last said those words for her to care.

 

* * *

 

Oliver frowns and shoves his hands even deeper into his pockets, trying to keep warm. The city park is huge, and the kid didn’t exactly specify where to meet him. He’s about to give up and go home, but when he turns around the kid is standing right there and nearly gives him a heart attack.

“Sorry,” he apologizes when Oliver jumps.

“It’s fine,” he grumbles, “Just tell me who you are, where that tape came from, and what the hell is going on.”

“It’s a lot to explain,” The kid says nervously.

“Well then you better start trying,”

“Ok, my name is Jax. My mom was head of the security team at the firm before Wells. She’s the one who sent over the security tape that was used in the murder investigation. I was out at the movies that night with some friends, and she called me. She told me to spend the night at someone’s house, and that she loved me.”

“What did you do?” Oliver asks, seeing the evidence on the kid’s face of some sort of painful memory.

“I went home,” He answers honestly, “But by the time I got there, she was dead. A needle in her arm and drugs all around her.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver says, “But given the nature of this conversation, I’m going to take a wild guess here and say your mom wasn’t much of a drug user.”

“My grandfather was an addict, the woman wouldn’t even take painkillers cause she so afraid.” He confirms, “When we were cleaning out the house I found a DVD, “Jax’s first hockey game”, except I never played hockey.”

“It was the tape you gave me,” Oliver guesses and Jax nods.

“Somebody killed my mom, and whoever it is, I’ll bet you anything they’re the same person who set Sara up.” He says and Oliver nods.

“So the question is,” The older man begins, “What exactly are we dealing with here?”

* * *

 

Lisa is still on PI.

Granted, she only just transferred cells and so Helena might not have gotten around to firing her just yet. Or maybe she plans on keeping Lisa on because she’s actually a good worker. It doesn’t matter to Laurel either way. If Lisa really wants nothing to do with the escape plan then she’ll quit of her own accord soon enough.

In the meantime they’re gardening, which gives Laurel the perfect cover to slip away into the chemical shed under the guise of needing more fertilizer. Mick’s guarding the door, of course, and he raises an eyebrow at her when she approaches.

“I need more fertilizer,” she says bluntly.

“Give me one good reason I should trust you in there.”

Laurel huffs and crosses her arms over her chest, but before she can say anything Helena’s voice comes shouting from over at the garden.

“Lance! Hurry up with that fertilizer!”

She glances up at Mick, and he finally steps to the side. “If you’re not out in two minutes,” He warns her in a growl of a voice. “It ain’t gonna be pretty.”

She nods, “No problem,” she says and then enters the shed.

The shed is small, the shelves and racks home to different gardening supplies and it barely takes Laurel thirty seconds to find what she’s looking for. Not the fertilizer, mind you, but two smaller containers of chemicals and she slips a sample of each into her bra. Once she’s done with that she’s about to move for the fertilizer, but the door opens with a loud bang and the next thing Laurel knows she’s in the center of a fist fight against Helena, Rosa, and one of Helena’s other goons before she inevitably looses. She is then pinned to the ground by Rosa and the nameless goon, Helena tossing her shoe off her foot.

“Laurel Lance,” she singsongs as she makes her way towards the tool wrack and carefully selects a pair of hedge clippers, making Laurel gulp. “I’ve heard of you,” she says, leisurely walking towards a shelf of chemicals and picking through its contents. “The big shot Assistant DA,” she mused teasingly, grabbing something from the shelf that Laurel couldn’t see. “You’ve got a lot of enemies in here Lance, but lucky for you, you also helped my father get into protective custody.” She said as she approached Rosa with what she had taken from the shelf, a dirty rag, and slipped it between the woman’s fingers. “So you get a choice here,” she purred, grabbing the foot she had removed the shoe of and Laurel’s blood froze in her veins when she saw Helena lining up the hedge clippers with her smallest toe. “You can tell me where he is, or this hell hole can get a whole lot worse.” She said and Laurel felt the cool, sharp metal of the hedge clippers against her skin, already slicing into the base of her toe. But she doesn’t say anything, and so Helena frowns, but still shrugs. “Suit yourself,” she says nonchalantly and the next thing Laurel knows there is a rag over her mouth, muffling her scream as the edge of her foot suddenly erupts with a fiery pain.


	9. Warning Shot

Laurel screams, despite Rosa muffling the sound with a rag. Tears are streaming down her face and she has to pull her attention away from all the pain when she realizes that Helena is saying something else, and has the clippers positioned to take another toe.

“Better start talking Lance, you’ve got nine more toes and then ten fingers.”

She’s crying now, desperately crying and choking on both her tears and the rag that is being shoved further and further down her throat. “Suit yourself,” she just barely hears Helena say and then the pain erupts all over again.

She screams out against the rag, her eyes screwing shut as the infernal cloth travels so far into her throat that she actually feels Rosa’s hand against her teeth.

There’s a thud, followed by a crash, and then all Laurel hears is a frenzy of voices screaming at each other. Only as she registers that she is actually obtaining the air she is desperately gasping does she manage to crack her eyes open in time to see none other than Mick looming over her and scooping her into his arms. She doesn’t care, not at this point, and she just screams and cries with the pain while he takes off through the yard at full speed. By the time he gets through the door and starts heading up to medical, though the pain is still unimaginable, the panic is starting to subside. Her cries are turning from screams of agony to those of hysterics as Mick bursts into medical shouting for a doctor. Before she knows it she’s lying on Snart’s medical cot with him and the other doctor hovering over her, shouting not only at her, but also Mick as well as each other. The second doctor, Dr. Snow Laurel thinks her name is, puts a mask over her and before she can even try questioning it the pain starts to dull and fade away, her eyes drifting closed.

 

* * *

 

It’s been a few days now since Laurel’s incarceration, but dinnertime in the Queen apartment is still awkward and silent as ever.

They aren’t eating take out tonight, so that’s something, although Oliver is starting to think the take out was helping to make things less awkward. At least the grease stained cardboard boxes had fit in with the scene, two people anticipating one loss while mourning another, even if Laurel isn’t dead. Now their forks clang obnoxiously against ceramic plates as they try and eat their steak and potatoes as quietly as possible.

“So,” Oliver says, having had all he can take of the quiet. “How was school?”

Sin shrugs, her eyes focused on her potatoes. “Fine,” she says noncommittally.

“Anything exciting happen?”

Another shrug.

Pressing his mouth into a thin line Oliver resolves to give up, and that’s when a knock sounds at the door.

He looks up, and Sin looks over her shoulder in confusion. A quick exchange of glances between them confirms that neither of them is expecting anyone. Still confused Oliver rises from his seat and heads over to the door; opening it to maybe the last person he would’ve ever expected to see.

An old friend of his father’s.

“Mr. Merlyn?” It is very possible that he’s even more confused now than he was when the source of the knock was still a mystery. But the man in the doorway nods at him with a friendly smile.

“Hello Oliver, how have you been?”

“Um… fine, would you like to come in?” Oliver splutters, still stunned but opening the door wider and Malcolm walks in.

“Thank you,” the older man says, like nothing at all has happened in the past three years. Oliver hasn’t seen anyone from his parents’ friend circle since Sara’s trial; hell he hasn’t even seen his mother or Thea.

But Malcolm doesn’t comment on any of this. Instead his eyes settle on Sin, the goth now standing in the entryway between the kitchen and living room, and his face displays a smile that make’s Oliver’s stomach turn.

“Cindy, you’ve gotten tall.” He remarks; she frowns.

“It’s Sin,” she corrects him bluntly, folding her arms across her chest. “And I’ve actually only grown two inches.”

“Sin,” Oliver warns, praying that she’ll listen and watch her tone.

She glares at him, silently asking what she’s done wrong, but she doesn’t need an answer. Now is not the time, and Malcolm is not the person to unleash her anger on, so when she huffs and returns to the kitchen Oliver brings his attention back to their guest.

“Have you heard from Tommy recently?” He asks; his friend is probably the only topic of common ground that still exists between himself and Malcolm, who is nodding as he casually looks around the apartment.

“A little over a week ago,” he recalls, “Chicago keeps him busy, you?”

Oliver nods, his face serious. “I called to tell him about Laurel.” Merlyn nods, still inspecting the living area with an appraising eye, and the next move is up for the taking. So, Oliver takes it. “Mr. Merlyn, is there a reason that you’ve stopped by?” He asks, trying to remain as polite as possible

Finally, Malcolm meets his eyes; an amused smile on his face as though he thinks the manners the other man is trying to keep present are hilarious.

“Well I heard about what happened with Laurel, and with Sara’s execution set to take place at the end of the month… believe it or not Oliver I wanted to see how you were doing.” He says in a voice that at least sounds sincere, “Not to mention that… well you know as well as I do that Laurel is Cindy’s, excuse me, _Sin’s_ last living relative. With no family left for her I assumed, correctly apparently, that she would ask she be placed into your custody.” He pauses there, briefly, and gives a sigh. “You and Tommy have been friends ever since you were in diapers, and with him in Chicago you have no one around whom you can talk to. I just wanted to see how you’re holding up, to make sure you aren’t going to break under the stress like Laurel did.”

There it is.

To anyone else that might sound like a simple insult to Laurel. But Oliver knows Malcolm’s games, they’re the same as his mother’s always were, and that was a threat.

A threat for what Oliver isn’t sure, but it’s a threat nonetheless.

“Don’t worry,” He says, steely gaze locked firmly onto the other man, “I won’t.”

* * *

 

Mick isn’t sure how long it is that he sits outside Snart’s room up in medical, nor is he sure of who Maggie found to cover his station under the ruse of him helping Snart with a problem, or even if anyone believed that. What he does know is that he keeps replaying the scene in his head, over and over again.

_“Mind if we go in there and have a little chat with our friend?” Bertinelli asked, batting her lashes like an innocent little girl, despite the twinkle of mischief in her blue orbs. “We promise we’ll keep it quiet.”_

Mick groans and allows his head to fall heavily into his hands at the memory. Bertinelli isn’t stupid; she knows the rules and plays a careful game. If she had a problem with Laurel, especially at a time where he hadn’t exactly been thrilled with the new inmate, well he was willing to look the other way for five minutes to allow her a good punch or two.

But he never dreamed…

The door flies open with an audible shutter and Mick stands to attention at the sound, his worried eyes darting to the sight of Leonard emerging from the room looking pissed, but also relieved.

Mostly pissed, though.

“She’ll have some trouble balancing at first, but she should be ok.” Ordinarily if someone says a person will be ok you’re expected to feel relief, but all Mick feels is a heavy weight of guilt sinking in his chest. The way that Len is looking at him doesn’t help, waiting for an explanation or a defense that that he can’t give. Finally, after more than a few minutes of silence and avoided eye contact, he gives up. “What were you thinking Mick?” He asks, disappointment clear in his voice.

“She attacked Lisa,” The burly man grumbles lowly but his friend isn’t having it.

“Lisa can take care of herself,” he nearly snaps, “And she did. You don’t need to worry about her, and you certainly didn’t need to allow other inmates to corner her with gardening tools!”

“I didn’t know they were going to cut her toes off!”

“What did you think was going to happen?!”

This time Mick doesn’t answer, he just stands there looking at Leonard waiting for a response.

“Well?” The other man eventually demands, running out of patience, but Mick still has nothing. Eventually Len runs a hand over his face, giving up. “Whatever,” he mutters angrily, “She’s going to wake up soon, I should go in there and explain that she’s going to need to get used to only having eight toes.”

With that he disappears back into his office, and Mick stays standing where he is, rooted to the spot by regret.

 

* * *

 

Lisa has no idea what to think. Actually, she doesn’t even know what’s happened really. All she knows is that Helena, Rosa, and Leslie followed Laurel into the shed and not even two minutes later Mick rushed inside, and then came out with Laurel’s sobbing form in his arms. Other guards were quickly alerted to the chaos and while two of them stormed into the shed another two ushered her and Sara away to the locker room, telling them at PI was over for the day.

She feels lucky, after all that, that she’s still being allowed down to the visitation area. Cisco is waiting for her at one of the far booths and she instantly feels better, like whatever just happened can’t be as bad as it looked because he’s here, and so everything is going to be ok. Sitting down she takes the phone off the hook, Cisco already has his pressed to his ear.

“Hey,” he says and she smiles, blushing the way she always does when he looks at her like that.

“Hey,” she echoes

“How are you holding up?” He asks and she laughs, because of course he would ask her that on a day like today.

“You know… just counting down the days until I get to marry you.” He chuckles at her words, “Well that and the days until your next conjugal visit because last time was more fun than I’ve had since before I was in this tin can.” She practically purrs and she laughs when a faint blush finds its way onto her fiancé’s face, she loves embarrassing him.

“Yeah um, speaking of counting days Lisa, we never actually set a date for the wedding.” He reminds her and if it weren’t for the nervous look on his face she would find it amusing that he came all the way down here to talk with her about a date for their wedding.

“I mean…” she trails off, “I thought we said we were just going to get a Justice of the Peace on the day I get out. Maybe get our brothers there if they’re around.”

“Right,” he jumps in, “But… I was thinking…. I mean…” he’s stammering, and she’s eyes him until he can’t take it anymore and just sighs, whatever he has to say he’s about to get it over with. “Look, I just want to put it off by five months-”

“Five months?!” She interrupts sounding completely scandalized.

“Just hear me out,” Cisco says quickly, “I got a job offer, working for twenty-two months at one of the worlds leading laboratories on particle research. It would start next month, and it’s in Markovia. Gypsy and I would get to-”

“Gypsy?!” Lisa interrupts and Cisco gives her a leveling glare, unable to believe Gypsy is the part of this that she’s focusing on right now.

“Yeah, she’s my research partner. We would go to Markovia and then come back and build up S.T.A.R. Labs with everything that we learn.” He finishes but Lisa only rolls her eyes.

“So you want to postpone our wedding so that you can go halfway around the world with a girl who gets hearts in her eyes every time she looks at you?”

“What, you don’t trust me?” He asks, legitimately a little hurt by that.

“I trust you,” Lisa says, though not exactly softly. “It’s her I don’t trust.”

“Lisa come on,” Cisco starts to plead, “This is a huge opportunity for me, and the Lab needs everything we’re going to get out of this, do you really want me to give it up?”

She doesn’t, of course, she just doesn’t want him spending the next two years both so far from her and with Gypsy as the only person he knows anywhere near him.

Sighing into the phone she can feel his eyes on her, waiting for her answer. “Ok,” she answer dejectedly, “Have fun in Markovia.”

He looks like he’s about to say something, like he’s about to promise that he’s going to marry her or something sentimental like that, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She just hangs up her phone and signals for the guard to take her away.

 

* * *

 

When Laurel wakes up Snart is there, and he tells her that she’s lost two of her toes. He gives her some medicine for the pain and tells her that she can stay in medical until dinner, which she is more than ok with. He leaves her unattended, knowing that she’s in no condition to go anywhere.

But he doesn’t know her.

She can’t walk, even if he hadn’t warned her that it will take her some time to adjust her sense of balance she would’ve guessed as much, not to mention that her foot has about four layers of bandaging on it. She waits until she’s sure that neither him nor Dr. Snow is anywhere near the office and then slides herself off the medical cot. Crawling on her hands and knees she goes over to the vent on the floor and takes the two chemicals she smuggled from the gardening shed out of her bra and, after checking over her shoulder one last time, carefully eyeballs the appropriate amounts out of each bottle and into the vent.

Was this her original plan? No. But when opportunity knocks it’s best to answer; at least one good thing came out of this whole thing.

Suddenly she hears the sound of loud footfalls coming from outside the door and caps both bottles; there should be enough of each substance in the vent. For a minute she panics about what to do with the bottles, as she’s impressed they didn’t fall out of her bra in all the chaos. Then the air vent, the old fashioned, square holed air vent, catches her eye; and down the bottles go.

Crawling on her stomach she just barely makes it to the base of the cot before the door opens and she directs her attention to the steel-toed boots standing in the entrance.

It isn’t Snart; it’s Mick.

He stares at her for a second, and she just stares back, each of them waiting for the other to make a move.

“What are you doing?” He finally asks her and she chuckles.

“Would you believe me if I told you I fell?” She asks and he raises a skeptical eyebrow at her, so that’s probably a no. “I wanted to try and at least stand, see if I could put any pressure on it.”

He grunts, and she isn’t sure he believes her, but he walks into the room and crouches himself down right next to her.

“I… I didn’t know she was gong to… I never should’ve…” he trails off and looks down at his hands, looking so sorry.

“It’s ok,” Laurel says softly, it isn’t really, but it’s clear that he’s sorry and that might be something she could use to her advantage later on. He meets her eyes, his expression surprised, and she gives him a sad smile. “Help me up?” She asks and he nods before carefully talking ahold of her arm and laying it across his shoulders. She groans a few times in pain as he helps her, and he mutters a small apology each time that she does. Eventually he gets her back onto the cot and helps her sit up.

“Thanks,” she says and he nods at her.

“There’s nothing to try putting pressure on,” he warns and she nods with a small smile. He lingers for only a minute longer, and then he turns without a word and leaves her there.

 

* * *

 

“So,” A blonde man begins as his partner approaches their usual park bench, folding up his newspaper. “Is he going to back off?”

Malcolm glances off at the birds gathering in the distance as he takes his seat. “If he’s smart.” He finally answers.

“Well you’ve never said anything about him being smart.” His partner quips and he can’t help but smirk.

“He did become a lawyer Damian,” he says in Oliver’s defense, “Though I’m not exactly sure how.”

It’s quiet for another minute, Damian humming in thought as they both mull over all their possible options. “What do you think?” He finally asks.

“I think,” Malcolm begins, “Keep an eye on them, and if any one of them makes another move.” He turns to his partner then, he face serious as can be. “End all of them.”


	10. Let The Games Begin

Returning to her cell, aided by Sawyer, Laurel can’t suppress the rolling of her eyes when she sees Gideon on her hands and knees peering under the bed, though she straightens up once the cell opens.

“What happened to you?” She asks, crinkling her nose in distaste, but Laurel’s getting the impression that she doesn’t really care.

“Gardening accident,” She huffs as Sawyer all but drops her onto her bottom bunk.

“You can say that all you want Lance, but we all know it’s a load of crap.” The guard huffs with her hands on her hips. “You know I honestly don’t know who the biggest moron is in this scenario; you, Bertinelli and her goons, or Mick.”

She may be in an intense amount of pain right now, but Laurel isn’t deaf, and she hears the frustrated disappointment in Sawyer’s voice when she mentions Mick. She adds it to her mental list of things that she knows about the guards, that Sawyer cares about Mick.

“Anyway,” she huffs, moving on with her thoughts, “Try to keep your weight off it.” She advises with a closed mouth smile of sympathy and then exits the cell without another word.

“Wow,” Gideon drawls with a click of her tongue and Laurel groans as she flops onto her back, wincing heavily and sucking a breath in through her teeth when her foot hits against the bed pole.

“What were you looking for under the bed?” She grumbles with her eyes closed, she honestly just wants to fall asleep at this point after the day she’s had.

But, she needs to be sure that no aspect of her plan has been discovered.

“My earing,” Gideon answers sarcastically, an obvious lie. “If you must know, someone at the end of the hall started screaming about a rat earlier today, I was making sure it hasn’t found it’s way in here.” Laurel hums but says nothing; not entirely sure she believes Gideon but too tired to care. “Why?” Her cellmate goes on, “Hiding something under there?”

“Nope,” she answers easily, popping the “P” with her lips.

Gideon hums and without looking Laurel can tell that she’s frowning, but then she hears the mattress above her creaking and decides that, for now at least, the brunette has given up.

* * *

 

It could’ve been hours, it could’ve been minutes, Sara honestly has no idea. While time is normally relative to her it was seeming even more so now as she was walking circles around her hole. She still doesn’t know what happened to Laurel today, but the sight of Mick racing from the shed with her in his arms was hardly a comforting one.

Eventually she hears a door open out in the corridor and her heart freezes in her chest. She knows that the guards wouldn’t tell her anything unless the situation with Laurel was dire. She hears more than one pair of feat, far more, which is odd. She hears a cell a few down from her own open, then the one next to her, and finally the one on the other side of her. There’s cursing, along with some laughing, in voices that she recognizes. She waits until she hears the main door of the corridor open and close again, until she’s sure the guards are gone.

“Bertinelli!” She demands, not even asking for confirmation that she’s identified the voices correctly. “What did you idiots do to my sister?”

She hears cackling, and she’s fairly certain it’s coming from Leslie, but it makes her blood boil all the same.

“Your sister should’ve given me the information I asked for,” Bertinelli replies casually and now that Sara knows what side of her the other woman is on she walks over to the wall of her cell and smacks a hand against it.

“The hell did you do?!” She roars loudly, so loudly that, far as she can tell, even Leslie has shut her mouth.

It’s a long minute before she gets an answer, Helena either toying with her from the other side of the wall or fearing that she’s just sealed her own grave; Sara honestly isn’t sure which she would prefer.

“Relax,” the mob princess finally calls back, “She’ll live.”

That does nothing to settle Sara’s stomach.

 

* * *

 

The door to the apartment opens and Mick doesn’t even look up, just raises his beer to his lips. He knows what’s coming, he just doesn’t know who it’s coming from.

“Are you gonna drink all night?”

Ah, so it’s Maggie who’s pulled the short straw.

He turns to look over the shoulder of his beat up recliner. She’s standing there with her arms folded across her chest and her disappointed eyes fixed on him.

“Shouldn’t you be fixing that snowflake?” He asks, referring to the glass snowflake, the one thing Leonard has from his mother; that she accidently broke when she moved in a week ago.

“Just saying,” she says curtly, “Warden wants to see you bright an early tomorrow, to discuss the future of your job.” She gives him a second to react to that, but he says nothing. “I’d recommend not being drunk.”

He still doesn’t say anything, so she turns and begins stalking away.

“You mean hung over?” He calls after the sound of her retreating footsteps.

“Knowing you, I mean drunk.” She confirms, not slowing her pace by even a step.

 

* * *

 

Lying awake Laurel is trying to determine whether or not Gideon is asleep above her. She’s been here a week now, and has all the groundwork laid for the escape, but she can’t waist any more time. Trusting Gideon doesn’t feel right, not when the woman was jut released from the psych ward, and clearly had a reason for being there. If she can’t trust Gideon that means she’ll have to work on her plans during the night, quietly, while the brunette is asleep. It isn’t ideal in the least, but it’s the way that things will have to be.

Deciding that she hasn’t heard her cellmate so much as move in at least an hour Laurel slides her way off her bunk, wincing a tiny bit as her injured foot makes contact with the concrete floor. After reaching back under the mattress to grab her shaven bolt she crawls over to their toilet, but doesn’t even get the chance to start on her plan before she hears Gideon shifting.

“God!” She whispers the curse after glancing back over her shoulder only to find Gideon lying on her stomach with her head at the foot of the bed, watching her very intently. “What are you doing?” She demands in a hushed voice, once the shock has worn off.

“I could ask you the same,” Gideon replies, unapologetic.

“I’m going to the bathroom.” Laurel all but sneers.

“You’re on the ground,” Gideon points out and Laurel huffs.

“It hurts too much to walk,” She admits dejectedly, “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I have insomnia, I hardly ever sleep.” Gideon replies very matter-of-factly, and it takes all of Laurel’s self control to keep from slamming her head against the edge of the toilet bowl.

Of course.

* * *

When morning comes Mick, to his own surprise, is mostly sober. Walking into Iron Heights he is fully prepared for the warden to fire him without even hearing his side of things. He’s ok with that, well maybe not OK but he understands it. He doesn’t have a side of things to argue. He messed up, plain and simple. He just wants to get this over with as painlessly as possible.

Of course, painless never seems to be an option for him.

Walking into the warden’s office he barely suppresses a roll of his eyes. Maggie is in there, sitting in one of the chairs opposite the warden’s desk, and watching him with the same hard stare that she had trained on the road throughout the entire drive here. The warden looks even angrier, though he thinks some of that anger might just be annoyance directed at Maggie for inserting herself into a situation that she has no business being involved in.

“Officer Rory,” The Warden greets him coldly, her eyes narrowing in on him.

He nods a hello to her, “Warden Grant.” He greets and her eyes narrow even more, maybe he shouldn’t have used her name.

“Have a seat,” she more orders than invites him, but he walks over to the chair next to Maggie all the same and sits down. “So,” Grant begins in that voice of hers that lets him know she’s already made up her mind about the situation. “I understand there was an incident during PI work yesterday, can you tell me about what happened?”

He sighs, this isn’t going to be pretty. “Laurel Lance was jumped by three of the other inmates who work on PI; Rosa Dillon, Leslie Willis, and Helena Bertinelli.”

Grant nods along as he speaks, “And what was the extent of this jumping?” She asks, Mick sighs again.

“Lance lost two of her toes.” He can see Maggie starting to worry next to him, she knows what’s coming just as well as he does.

“Mhmm,” Grants hums with false thought, “And where were you during all of this?” She asks and Mick just sighs yet again, hanging his head low at her words. “Oh stop with the pity party,” she continues with a snarl, getting him to snap his head back up. “You’re on thin ice Rory,” she reminds him, “But I’m not firing you.”

“You’re not,” he and Maggie ask at almost the same time.

“I probably should,” She adds, “But instead I’m just going to pull you from PI guard duty, and Officer Sawyer.” She says with a sudden smile at Maggie, “Since you care so much about what happens to Rory here I’m going to switch his duties with yours. You’ll be overseeing PI from now on.”

Maggie looks as though she wants to argue, Mick can see it in her eyes, but she knows that things will only get worse for them both if she does. So she nods acceptingly, and Grant smiles.

“Great,” she beams, “Now run along, you both have work to do.”

* * *

 

Laurel wasn’t expecting to be brought down to visitation today, since she didn’t think the prison would notify Oliver of yesterday’s incident. But here she is, being led through the line of phones and being sat down across from her best friend.

“Hi,” she greets him as she picks up the phone.

“Hey, were you limping just now?”

Ok, so no one called him.

“Um… yeah, there’s was a mishap yesterday, I’m ok though.” She promises and he still looks concerned, very concerned, but he doesn’t say anything about it. “What’s going on with you?”

He sighs, and Laurel notes that he looks very worried. “I think…” he says slowly, as though still debating whether or not he’s going to tell her whatever it is that he’s about to. “That… we might have actually found something in Sara’s case.”

Laurel’s eyes grow wide as she leans close towards the glass. “What?” She demands, “Where?”

“The security video,” he answers calmly, “I brought it to a friend and we discovered it was edited, there was an angle where you could see into the driver’s seat of that car, and there was no one there.”

Laurel, even though she’s believed Sara’s innocence for a long time, still gasps lightly at the words. She hadn’t expected Ollie to find anything, and she’s almost bitter about it because if it checks out then that could mean she’s doing all that she’s doing for nothing.

But that’s a big “if”, because if someone was willing to go to such lengths to frame Sara for the murder of one of Star City’s most powerful businessmen, then the deck could be stacked against them more than they realize.

Judging by his gaze, Oliver knows this as well, and he’s worried.

“I’m doing everything that I can, hopefully we can resolve this.” She can see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, he’s figured out what it is that she’s up to. He doesn’t know how she plans on accomplishing her goal, but he’s worried about her and doesn’t want her to go through with it.

That being said, if his end fails, he won’t come back here to try and stop her.

“Hopefully,” she says and the buzzer rings to let inmates know that visiting time is over.

“Be careful Laurel,” he says as a guard appears behind her to lead her away, she nods and speaks one more time before he has to hang up the phone.

“You too.”

 

* * *

 

“He didn’t listen?” Damian asks into his phone, not that he’s really surprised to hear about this.

“We tried to warn him,” Malcolm’s voice comes over the line, “Not our fault he didn’t heed it.”

Damian smiles evilly, glancing out the window of his parked car as he watches an older couple walking up the front steps of a perfect little suburban house. “Start with the kid?” He asks and in his mind’s eye he can see Malcolm smirking on the other end.

“Well, he _was_ warned first, two years ago, he should’ve known better.”

“Gah, and he’d been doing so good so far too, it really is a shame.” The blonde man says with mock disappointment as he tugs his gloves onto his hands and double checks to be sure that his gun is loaded. “Oh well, I’ll call you in about fifteen minutes.”

 

* * *

 

“Can’t wait,” Malcolm says smugly, hanging up his phone and turning his attention back to the woman sitting at the desk in front of him.

“Damian’s taking care of the kid,” he reports and the woman nods, though she also frowns.

“Both of them?” She questions and Malcolm shakes his head.

“In one day that would be too suspicious, we have to be smart about this. We’ll see how things play out today, and if Oliver doesn’t heed this warning, we’ll go after Sin.”

“We don’t give second chances Malcolm,” The woman says plainly, “One warning, and that’s it.”

“With all due respect madam, we can’t afford anyone linking these crimes.” He argues and the woman stands from her desk, slowly sauntering her way around it like a jaguar about to sink its teeth into its prey.

“If Damian does his job correctly, we won’t have that issue.” She says.

“That’s a pretty big if,” Malcolm insists but her eyes narrow on him, and she steps closer to him. “Oliver is a smart man Malcolm, and that boy clearly isn’t an idiot. If we wait to move on Sin they’ll have a chance to meet up.” She steps even closer until she’s whispering in his ear. “Do not give them that chance.”

She’s gone from his bubble in an instant, her heels clicking dramatically as she heads out of the office, leaving Malcolm to sigh and drag a hand over his face.

He’ll always believe in her, always back her play, but one of these days Moira Queen is going to be the death of him.


	11. Who's Side are you On?

“I’m home,” Jax announces as he walks through the front door of the house, kicking it closed behind him. “Hello?” Normally he wouldn’t call into the house for a second time, it’s not like he was expecting a response the first time. But something that he can’t quit put his finger one is giving him this sort of off feeling, like something isn’t right. “Grey?” He continues, cautiously making his way down the hall of the house. The car was in the driveway, so someone has to be home. “What the-?”

He stops. Dead in his tracks, one hand moving to cover his mouth. He’s made it to the kitchen entrance by now, and is looking at something lying on the floor.

At first he can’t really tell what it is, all his mind will register is a large object. But then he takes a step closer, and he realizes that it’s a person he’s looking at. Not just a person, actually, but Clarissa… and she’s dead.

“Jefferson,” The choked sound of his name cuts through the haze of his mind before he can really process what it is he’s looking at, and he spins to see a blonde man standing behind him with Grey in a chokehold, a gun pressed to his head.

“Grey!” He shouts with a step forward, but the stranger with the gun shakes his head.

“Uh, uh, uh.” He warns with a sadistic grin, tightening his arm around Grey’s neck. “You know Jefferson, Jax, whatever it is that you go by; we thought you had learned after the first time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“But,” The man continues, as if Jax hasn’t said anything. “I guess we’re just going to have to teach you again.”

“No!” Jax shouts, lunging forward, but he’s too late. The shot rings out just a split second before he can grab it, however despite being too late grab it he does, and he points it right at the man standing before him, Grey’s lifeless body the only thing between them.

“Whoa!” The man exclaims almost like he were impressed, “Too bad you weren’t just a hair faster, you might have actually stopped me.”

“Who are you?” The furious demand all but explodes out of Jax’s mouth. “And tell me before I shoot you.”

“Ok first of all, who are you kidding?” He all but scoffs, “You’re not going to shoot me.” Jax leans closer as if to prove otherwise. “Second, I’m not going to tell you my name. What I can tell you is that I’m wearing gloves, and you’re pointing the gun that was used to kill ma and pa over here, at me. So when the police get here, whose fingerprints are going to be recovered?” Jax’s eyes widen with panic, then as if on cue the sounds of sirens are crying up the street and getting louder by the second.

He turns his head on impulse, and when he turns back the blonde man is gone, and the sound of a police officer pounding on the front door is coming from behind him.

Shit.

He needs to run, so he quickly puts the safety on the gun and makes a B-Line for the kitchen door. He can already hear the police shouting, and he’s pretty sure at least one officer has seen him. He can’t explain this, not now, so he keeps running. He hops the fence into the neighbor’s yard and then takes off into the woods behind their house, taking out his phone and dialing Lily’s number only to get her voicemail.

“Lily, whatever you hear, I didn’t do it!” He shouts into the device and keeps running.

* * *

 

“The kid’s on the run,” Damian confirms, sitting in his car now a few good blocks away from the Stein’s residence.

“Good,” Malcolm says on the other end of the phone, “Because Moira wants Sin dealt with too, so you need to hurry.”

Darhk snickers to himself, he can hear the frustration in Merlin’s voice. “Way ahead of you Malcolm, as usual.”

 

* * *

 

It’s been a day, Sara thinks. It could’ve been longer, she really can’t tell. Her yard time has been suspended along with that of everyone else of PI, but Bertinelli and her goons were taken back to gen pop what must have been a few hours ago, and now Sawyer is standing outside her door.

“PI is back in action today,” The guard informs her through the little slot in the door usually reserved for food. “I’m supposed to let you go, but not if I think you’re a danger to someone.”

Sara hums thoughtfully at that. She’s a dead woman already, despite Laurel’s insane plan, so she really has nothing to lose by killing Bertinelli. Still, she wants to know what happened before she actually decides to live up to her nickname.

“There’s four of them Sawyer, five counting my sister, I’m not stupid.”

 

* * *

 

Normally when Sin gets called to an office she has a general idea of what it is she’s going in for. With Olsen it’s usually because she’s skipped either class or their weekly meeting. Occasionally one of her teachers might hold her after class, either because she’s failed an assignment or she’s done surprisingly well. Either way, she always has an idea of what’s going on when she goes in. But this is the _principal’s_ office. She’s never been called down here before, and certainly not randomly during her fifth period home economics class. Whatever is going on, she’s expecting to find Olsen in the office along with Holt, and indeed he is there. But she almost doesn’t notice, because also in the office are two police officers.

“Mr. Olsen?” She asks, confused, partially by the officers and partially by the heartbroken look of Olsen’s face. “What’s going on?”

“Well Cindy,” Principal Holt starts, his face looking almost as pained as Olsen’s. “We were hoping that you might be able to explain that.” He then leans down and opens one of his drawers, pulling something out.

“We received a tip from a student, saying you were seen placing this inside your locker this morning.” Olsen explains as Holt lays down the object atop his desk, and much to Sin’s shock it’s a large bag containing a gun. “Sin,” Olsen goes on, frowning. “I know you’re going through a lot right now-”

“Wait, what?” She interrupts, unable to even fathom what it is she’s hearing, never mind where it’s going. “That isn’t mine!”

Holt and Olsen exchange a look of sorrow, and that’s when Sin’s heart free-falls into the pit of her stomach. She can see it on their faces; they don’t believe her, and there’s nothing that she can say to convince them.

“It isn’t mine,” She repeats, desperate tears shining in her eyes as Olsen meets her gaze.

“We’ll look into that Sin,” He promises, his voice apologetic. “But between this and the drugs… I’m sorry Sin, you’re going to have to be placed under arrest.”

She barely registers the police guiding her arms behind her back; securing the handcuffs around her back. Her whole body feels numb, her mind in a haze as she’s led away.

 

* * *

 

“Laurel!” Sara exclaims in relief when she’s led into the locker room to change for PI, immediately hurrying to hug her sister. They’re supposed to keep their hands to themselves, always, but Sawyer turns and looks the other way for this. “What happened? Are you ok?”

“I’m fine,” Laurel insists as the two pull out of their embrace. “I’m ok, limping a little but I’m fine.”

“What did they do to you?”  
“It doesn’t matter,” The finality in Laurel’s voice shuts down any potential for an argument. “We’ve wasted enough time as it is, if we’re going to get you out of here, we need to get PI in order. That means letting them in on the plan… and getting rid of Lisa.”

Sara looks surprised, but not nearly as surprised as Laurel when her former cellmate appears next to her.

“I don’t think so,” the brunette says firmly, “I’m in.”

“What?” Laurel asks, perplexed, “But you said-”

“Things have changed,” She quickly interrupts, “If I wait sixteen months to get out of here I’ll lose my fiancé… I can’t lose Cisco.”

Both Lance sisters frown with sympathy and worry at the news, but eventually Laurel smiles and grabs her friend’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Alright then,” she says sweetly, “In that case, we need to get rid of Gideon.” She says before her eyes sparkle with mischief, as a plan starts to formulate in her mind. “And I think I have an idea for how.”

* * *

 

Sin would never admit that she’s been crying, not to Oliver, not to anyone. But she has no idea what’s happening, or why. She can’t even begin to fathom how that gun found it’s way into her locker, nor can she even imagine whose it could be. Sure, some of her friends have done some questionable things, but none of them would ever do something like this; much less try and blame her for it. She’s been sitting in the holding cell of the police station for the past twenty minutes, trying to make sense of it all, when the sound of a door opening pulls her from her thoughts.

It’s Oliver.

He’s led over to her cell by an officer, a look of disappointment to match those of Olsen and Colt on his face, and it’s too much for her to handle. She can feel her face growing red and a choked sob forces it’s way out of her throat as tears cloud her vision.

Without a word the officer unlocks her holding cell and she rushes forward, her arms locking tightly around Oliver as more cries escape her control. She feels him smoothing a gentle hand on the back of her head, holding her tightly until she’s calmed down a bit and then he starts to lead her out of the station. He speaks with the officer for a little while first, something about a trial date and serious charges, things she doesn’t want to listen to. Eventually, finally, they make it out of the station.

“I didn’t do it,” she murmurs once they’re outside, heading for his car.

“I know.”

For a moment she’s stunned, he actually believes her. Sliding into the passenger seat of his car she’s about to ask why he believes her, and what’s going to happen, but instead a lumpy mass underneath a dark blanket on the floor of the backseat catches her eyes.

“Uh… What’s with the blanket?”

“Long story,” a muffled voice responds from under the blanket and Sin nearly screams, almost leaping in her seat as Oliver starts speeding away from the station.

“Sin calm down.” He orders her, his voice frustrated and not nearly surprised enough for her liking.

“Calm down?!” She demands, “Why do you have a person hiding on the floor of your back seat?!”

Huffing out a sigh Oliver comes to a careful stop at a light, almost suspiciously careful.

“Like he said, it’s a long story.”

 

_Oliver sighs as he hangs up his phone, unable to believe what he’s just heard. A gun was found in Sin’s locker. A gun. He has to leave work early and go down to the police station to collect her, because she brought a gun to school. Never in a million years would he have pictured this happening. If anything he would believe that Sin would go to great lengths to avoid any sort of jail time simply to prove to the world that she is not her mother._

_Suddenly his phone is buzzing, the screen lighting up with Jax’s number._

_“Not the best time Jax-”_

_“Some guy just killed my grandparents!” The younger man’s voice explodes on the other end and has Oliver halting in his tracks._

_“What?” He demands_

_“The people I live with, whatever you want to call them, some dude just shot them and set it up to frame me!”_

_“Why?”_

_“I don’t know,” Jax says “But he said something about how I should’ve learned the first time, and he’s teaching me again.”_

_“What does that mean?” Oliver is growing impatient now._

_“I don’t know,” Jax repeats, “But I think it’s something to do with getting involved with Sara’s case, and how my mom died when she got involved.”_

_Ordinarily Oliver might be a little more skeptical about that, but considering he just found out that a weapon was found in Sin’s locker, well he’s inclined to believe Jax._

_“Where are you right now?” He asks, if he’s right and these two incidents are related none of them are safe._

_“In an alley behind Jitters,” he answers, his voice hushed as if he’s afraid someone might overhear him._

_Frankly, it’s a legitimate fear._

_“Ok, I’ll be right there.”_

 

By the time he finishes with the explanation they’re already out of the city, and Sin’s jaw may as well be in her lap.

“Ok…” She says, her voice shaky not with any evidence of the tears she had cried in the police station, but with fear of whatever is going to happen next. “So where are we going?”

Oliver almost growls at the question, because he isn’t entirely sure he has an answer.

“Once we’re a little further from the city Jax is going to get off the floor, we’re heading to some cabin that used to belong to his dad. But for now I need you both to give me your phones.” At first Sin looks at her like he’s crazy, like she thinks he’s trying to ground her or something. But when Jax’s hand pops up from the floor with his phone she takes it and then retrieves her own from her pocket, and then hands both phones to him.

He takes the devices with a grateful nod and grabs his own phone, and then roles down his window and chucks all three phones out before rolling it back up.

“Dude!” Sin exclaims in shock.

“Did he just toss my phone out the window?” Jax questions from the back.

“Whoever this guy is I’m willing to bet he’s able to use our phones to track us, so we can’t have them.” Oliver says firmly.

Sin huffs and settles back into her seat, folding her arms across her chest. “You didn’t have to throw them out a window going 80 miles per hour down the freeway.” She grumbles; Oliver just rolls his eyes.

 

* * *

 

“You want to do what?” Helena demands after Laurel has explained her escape plan, or part of it anyway, she’s explained that she has a plan to escape and that they still need two more people.

“You want your shot at your dad?” Laurel demands knowingly, “I’ll tell you where he is once we’re on the other side of that wall. But in order to get that far we need Allen and Diggle.”

“No,” Helena shakes her head; “We need Allen _after_ we’ve gotten that far. We don’t need Diggle at all.

“Diggle’s run favors for every person in this prison at least once, all of us included. She keeps her eyes on everyone, it’s better to have her with us than against us.” Laurel insists but Helena is still shaking her head.

“What you’re talking about is something that’s never been pulled off before, the less people who know about it the better.” Helena argues, glancing over her shoulder to make sure none of the guards are listening; but apparently none of them find it very entertaining to watch inmates paint a wall.

“How about we keep Dig in mind?” Sara suggests as a form of compromise. “We leave her out for now, but if she starts to get wise we bring her on.”

Laurel and Helena both mull at idea over for a minute before Helena is the first to nod.

“Fair enough,” She agrees and Laurel, while clearly not happy about it, nods in acceptance.

“Fine,” she verbally agrees, and they move on.

“Before we even try bringing Allen in we need to get rid of your crazy cellmate.” Helena says and for once Laurel couldn’t agree more.

“Oddly enough,” She says rolling the left sleeve of her PI jumpsuit up to her elbow, directing Helena’s attention to the three names, English, Fitz, and Percy, tattooed on the underside. “She just might be exactly what we need.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the update being so late! Real life's been busy lately!


	12. Sound the Alarm

Laurel isn’t the only one who needs to go to medical everyday.

As an ex-inmate of the psych ward Gideon still needs to take her medication, and so every night, right after dinner, she is brought up to medical to do so and Laurel is alone when Mick locks the door of her cell.

“Gideon is crazy,” She says suddenly when the burly man goes for her lock. “Every time they bring me back from medical she’s looking under my mattress, and she doesn’t ever sleep. I swear she’s plotting to kill me or something!”

“Not my problem,” Mick huffs, turning the key and locking her in.

“Come on Mick, Lisa and I have worked out our differences, she even told me she misses me!” She continues to plead, “Isn’t there any way we could be cellmates again?”

“Sorry Lance, what’s done is done, deal with it.” With that he walks away, leaving Laurel to huff lightly to herself, she tried going about this the civil way.

 

* * *

 

It’s late by the time Oliver, Sin, and Jax reach the cabin. They’re a little impressed that they even made it at all, all things considered.

“We’re going to need food, and more clothes, at some point.” Sin says oh-so-helpfully as she and Jax file out of the car, both of them approaching Oliver’s open window.

“We’ll worry about that tomorrow,” Oliver promises with a roll of his eyes. “Where can I hide the car?”

“Uh…” Jax trails off, looking around as if trying to jog his memory. “There’s a shed behind the house, we can grab an old tarp from there, and there’s a clearing down the road, just behind some trees.”

Oliver nods and puts the car into park for the time being, “You two get inside, start settling in.” It’s an order, even if they all know none of them are looking to “settle in” Sin still nudges Jax to lead the way into the cabin, she’s known Oliver long enough to know when he won’t be argued with.

So the two of them head into the house alone, the door only a little stuck and dust flying everywhere after they do manage to open it.

“No one’s been here for awhile, so it’s a little bit of a mess.” Jax apologizes, both of them coughing on the dust.  
Venturing further into the small cabin Sin picks up a grime coated plate off the counter, grimacing at the feel of it on her fingers and putting it back. “As long as this psycho we’re running from can’t find us, we can deal with a few cobwebs.” She says as she wipes her hands along the sides of her dark jeans, her eyes looking around some more.

The cabin is small, with a barely existent, not to mention invisible, boundary line between the kitchen and the living room. There’s a washing machine, most likely broken, right next to the fridge, also likely broken. Just past the kitchen/living area is a tiny hallway with two doors at the end.

“The one on the right is the bathroom,” Jax supplies when he notices her eyes the doors, “Bedroom’s the one on the right.”

He doesn’t say anything more, just leaves the statement at that and moves to inspect the old fireplace.

“Will someone notice if smoke starts coming out of that chimney?” She questions, approaching him and content to ignore the issue of the bedroom until later as well.

“There’s nobody around for miles,” Jax assures her with a look over his shoulder. “Besides, it gets pretty cold at night, we’re going to need it.”

Sin’s really only half listening, most of her brain is still trying to process all of what’s happening.

“So what?” She asks as she settles herself on the edge of the dusty wooden couch. “Some guy planted a gun on me then shot your grandparents, because we’re both connected to the same murder case?” She asks and Jax pauses with his inspection of the fireplace, finally looking over and meeting her eyes, his gaze showing her that he’s as scared as she is.

The door opens before he can say anything, however, and they both turn to see Oliver shutting it.

“Ok,” he says, clapping his hands together as he mentally sizes up their situation, even though he already knows it’s far from good. “Let’s try and figure out something for dinner.”

 

* * *

 

The timely footfalls of one of the two night guards periodically passing through the corridor are serving as the only sound Laurel can hear, with the exception of Gideon’s occasional movements above her.

“What do you do all night, if you don’t sleep?” She asks curiously, not to mention out of nowhere, fiddling with the end of her braid resting on her shoulder.

Gideon huffs above her, her tone rather annoyed. “Mostly I contemplate the pros and cons of smothering you with a pillow to stop your incessant soring.” She replies, disgusted. Laurel can’t actually tell if she’s joking or not, but it disturbs her that so much of her judgment is leaning towards serious. “Otherwise I just lie up here and try and figure out your tattoos.”

Laurel’s eyes go wide at the revelation, “My tattoos?” She questions, shocked.

“Yeah,” Gideon says before she’s leaning over the edge of her mattress. “They’re a maze.”

Laurel blinks at her, once, and then twice, still at a loss for words.

“You mean amazing?” She eventually asks and Gideon shakes her head.

“No, they’re a maze.” She says confidently, “They’re a map, aren’t they?” She asks inquisitively, head cocking slightly to the side like a confused puppy. “But what’s at the end?”

Still shocked Laurel lets out a nervous laugh, “No, it’s just a tattoo.” She insists but Gideon doesn’t believe it. In fact, she hops down from her bunk and so Laurel shrinks back into her own.

Gideon eyes her curiously, her exposed arms in particular, eyes scanning over the grey/blue lines that make up all the images decorating her skin.

This is going to be easier than Laurel thought.

Making sure to hold eye contact with her cellmate looming over her Laurel slowly moves her hands down until her fingers curl under the edge of her tank top. She’s careful as she rolls the garment up her body then pulls it over her head, exposing the rest of her tattoo for Gideon to see.

“It’s just a tattoo,” she repeats as her cellmate rakes her eyes over the images.

“No,” she insists, “It’s a map to the end.” She looks up then, her eyes meeting Laurel’s with an almost terrified seriousness. “A map to hell.”

Laurel takes a second to process that, before the periodic stomping of the night guard’s footsteps are back, Gideon is close, and her shirt is off; all of the pieces are in place.

So, for now, she ignores Gideon’s insane conclusion and puts her plan into action.

She lets out a scream.

 

* * *

 

Needless to say, the three fugitives, well two fugitives and Oliver, never ate dinner that night. Also, after a very long argument, Sin was designated to the bedroom whilst Oliver and Jax would sleep out in the living room; Jax on the hard couch and Oliver in an old sleeping bag on the floor. But, after everything that’s happened today, everything he’s seen, Jax can’t sleep. He also can’t think, can’t process anything while lying on that godforsaken sorry excuse for a couch, so he decides to get up and slip quietly outside.

Apparently he isn’t the only one to think of this.

Sin’s out there, sitting on one of the deteriorating vinyl chairs with more snapped bands than usable ones, but she’s managed to sit in it.

“Hey,” he says when her eyes land on him. “I didn’t see you leave.”

She shrugs, though the look on her face is a little smug. “I climbed out the bedroom window.” She admits, “Couldn’t sleep, thought some fresh air might help.”

“Mind if I join you?” He asks, gesturing to the pile of rotted firewood beside her, moving to sit down but changing his mind when the wood starts to cave and tumble beneath him, so he settles for leaning his back against the side of the house.

They’re quiet for a little while, but they are strangers so it isn’t like they can comfort each other.

But if they don’t, it’s not like there’s anyone else who will.

“So this place belonged to your dad?”

Jax sighs at the question, leaning back a little further against the dirt coated wall of the old shack. “Used to,” he says, “Not sure it belongs to anybody anymore.”

It’s quiet again, but only for a minute. “What happened to him?” Sin asks the dreaded question and Jax shrugs, almost indifferent; he’s explained this enough times throughout his life.

“He was stationed overseas, shipped out a couple hours after I was born. There was an explosion… and he never came home.” He’s looking ahead as he tells his story, not at Sin, so he doesn’t see when she looks at her feet then out at the black horizon line for herself.

“At least you know what happened,” she can feel him look to her, but just like he did she keeps her eyes trained on the trees ahead of them. “Supposedly my dad died before I was born, or maybe after, but either way I’m about 80% sure he’s dead.” That’s when she brings herself to look at Jax, and she almost laughs at the look of total confusion on his face.

In the end he doesn’t ask, just nods and they fall back into silence, only this time it’s a comfortable one.

Neither of them will admit it, but they both know they’re in over their heads. They never had much of a choice in the matter, somehow they’ve both been thrown into this mess; a mess they aren’t even close to understanding the severity of.

 

* * *

 

“I told you she was crazy,” Laurel mutters, sitting on the edge of a chair in the warden’s office. The warden isn’t actually here, but when Mick burst into her and Gideon’s cell to break up the fight he, wisely, decided they needed to be separated and so he brought her here and left her cellmate locked up. Mick grunts but doesn’t say anything, just remains quiet against the door. “You’re not going to make me sleep in there the rest of the night, are you?” She asks, her voice anxious.

“No,” Mick replies with a shake of his head, “Night guard over in psych ward is checking out your friend’s file, along with Snart’s logs since she joined gen-pop, if he thinks she’s safe to stay she will, but we’ll find an empty bed and move you for the night.”

Laurel nods, wringing her hands together in silence. Mick doesn’t know it yet, but the night isn’t over, and she’s just waiting for Helena to enact her part.

“You ok?” His question surprises her, but he must still feel guilty over the last time she got hurt on his watch, because there is genuine concern in his eyes to the point where she finds herself swallowing a lump in her throat.

“Yeah,” she answers, her voice small and eyes flitting away from him. “It was my own fault really, she was asking me about my tattoos and what the whole thing looks like. I should’ve realized she’d jump me.”

“That’s prison for ya,” He grunts and she can’t help but look at him, surprised, and upon her eyes falling onto him he seems to realize that he’s been less than tactful and awkwardly clears his throat. “I mean… this place… you can’t trust anybody.” He’s talking like he knows, and from more than just seeing it happen too. She’s considering asking, when his radio suddenly turning on makes the decision for her.

“Mick,” another guard’s voice comes over the channel. “We need you down on one, we’ve got a situation in section two.”

He looks almost annoyed as he presses the buttons on his radio to tell the other guard that he’s coming, and then before he leaves he points a stern finger at Laurel. “Don’t move,” he orders her, she gives him a mock salute.

“Yes sir,” she says and with that he leaves, and as soon as the door is closed behind him Laurel stands up, ready to set her plan into action.

Mick really should take his own advice; you can’t trust anybody.

She keeps quiet as she stands on her chair, just in case there’s still a guard standing watch outside of the office. In an effort to save money the upper level of Iron Heights, since it consists only of offices and doesn’t house inmates, was designed with cheaper ceiling tiles that can easily be removed. Laurel is silent and meticulous as she presses up on and slides it away, carefully bracing her hands against either side of the new opening and then with a deep breath she leaps off the chair and pulls herself up into the ceiling. Once she’s safely up she slides the missing tile back into place and begins crawling away.

* * *

 

For the record, Helena still doesn’t trust Laurel Lance completely. The woman is obviously desperate to save her sister, and desperate people tend to do crazy things. But she doesn’t seem stupid, in fact, she seems very smart. She knows exactly whom she needs to pull off this escape, and although Helena doesn’t particularly like the fact that she is keeping the majority of her plans in the dark, she can respect it. So she’ll do this one favor for Lance, to see if she can really deliver on her promises. Besides, somebody needs to talk some sense into Shawna.

“I’m just saying, it’s not like she ever does things on your terms.” She muses, leaning back casually against the wall as her cellmate sits on the edge of her bottom bunk rolling her eyes.

“Says who?” The other woman demands with a scoff, even though she knows very well that Helena is right.

“Name one time,” She challenges and as predicted Shawna can’t; the poor sucker.

She came in here a little over a year ago, charge of armed robbery or something like that. Cupid, who had already been incarcerated for three years at that point and still isn’t getting out any time soon, had just lost her previous bitch when the sorry kid was released, with more than enough psychological damage to last the rest of her life. So she started looking around at the fresh meat, settled on Shawna because she’s skinny and got beat up in her first week, and now she’s got the girl’s mind so twisted that a part of Shawna actually thinks her sociopathic “girlfriend” loves her.

“She just likes being in charge,” the unfortunate girl in question insists, furthering her delusion. “And I don’t, so it works.”

Helena still isn’t buying it, even if she were she can’t; her goal here is to cause a disturbance.

“Fine, suit yourself.” She grumbles, frustrated. “Spend the rest of your sentence as Cupid’s toy, see how long it takes her to kill you.”

She moves to get back on her bunk, and has to fight a smirk when Shawna stands and blocks her path; they’re finally getting somewhere.

“I am not her toy,” she defends.

“Oh no?” Helena questions mockingly, as though she’s talking to a child. “Then why do you follow her around holding onto her pocket?” She crosses her arms and leans into Shawna’s face, “Are you her dog?” Shawna’s eyes narrow, it won’t be long now. “Boo fetch, Boo sit down. Come here Boo, mommy wants some love.”

Shawna growls in rage.

It happens so fast that Helena is actually a little impressed; maybe her cellmate isn’t quite the weakling she’s been giving her credit for. She backs her into the wall by her shoulders. “Shut up!” She screams as Helena tries to fight back, but Shawna’s hands are moving to her throat.

Well that wasn’t part of the plan.

In response to being suffocated she manages to lock her own hands around Shawna’s throat and somewhere between the black spots overtaking her vision and the sounds of choked, enraged screams coming from them both Helena faintly hears the shouting of guards and the door of the cell clanging open, then she can breath again.

 

* * *

 

Mick shakes his head as he trudges back up to the warden’s office, wondering absently if it’s a full moon tonight or something. One assault on the floor after the lights have gone out is business as usual around here, but two is a little strange. He supposes that he was warned about Gideon, he just didn’t listen, and things between Bertinelli and Baez have been tense nearly the entire time they’ve been housed together. So really he shouldn’t be too surprised by any of this.

“Hey Lance,” he says as he opens the door to the office, but he freezes in his tracks. “Shit.”

 

* * *

 

When Laurel hears the sound of the alarms she’s halfway shimmied up an air duct, pausing only for a second before picking up her pace. Now that the prison has been slammed into emergency mode she only has one minute and twenty seconds to get in position, and thirty of those seconds she’s going to have to spend on the other side of the roof.

Upon making it to the grate at the end of the shaft Laurel keeps herself wedged tightly against the metallic walls and counts to ten, bracing herself, and when the search lights glide over the grate she forces it open. Keeping her body low she darts around the roof, hiding behind various vent tops and other dark spaces, always staying ahead of the lights. Finally she arrives at her destination, the final vent, and in the same second that she does the police cars fly down the street below. They come from English Street, and some of them drive nearly halfway down Fitz.

But Percy Avenue, that street is forgotten.

Smiling to herself Laurel ducks back and hurries to the vent she’d come from, getting inside and closing it just before the light can find it.

 

* * *

 

Warden Cat Grant does not take well to being woken in the middle of the night; much less by a phone call informing her that somebody may have escaped her prison.

The fact that the inmate her staff has apparently lost is Laurel Lance is almost absurd, considering the woman just lost two of her toes and only recently learned how to stand upright again. The only thing more ridiculous is the news that the reason she’s lost is because Mick Rory left her alone in the warden’s office because the other idiot on floor patrol for the night couldn’t handle a simple wrestling match.

Pathetic.

“If this prison’s reputation for being impenetrable goes down the drain I promise you Rory that your head will be decorating my office!” She grinds out as she marches to the room in question, Rory following behind her after catching her up on what’s going on.

“She won’t get far Ma’am, the cops have this place surrounded.” He assures her just as she opens the door of her office, and stops in her tracks.

“I’m sure she won’t.” She drawls, because there’s Laurel Lance, sitting on the floor in the corner of the room.

“Laurel,” Mick gasps from behind her and its all Cat can do to keep from rolling her eyes.

“What’s going on?” The inmate questions, slowly standing herself up and tucking some of her hair away from her face.

“Why don’t you tell us,” Cat demands, completely at her wits end.

“Well Officer Rory brought me here after Gideon jumped me, then he got a call from another guard saying they needed help downstairs. He told me to stay put, and then he left. I sat in that chair twirling my hair tie around my finger because I was bored, it flew off and landed under the desk so I went to grab it, I thought I heard the door open and close but when I looked up no one was in here, and then I heard the sirens.”

Cat takes a minute to process all of that, as well as to keep herself from exploding.

“Mick,” She eventually bites out, “Where is Miss Rider?” She asks, referring to Gideon by her last name.

“Uh, she had a break down after the alarms went off, started screaming about Hell and stuff like that. She’s back in psych ward.”

“Good,” Cat decides, “Then take Miss Lance back to her cell and count yourself lucky to still have a job here.”

Mick just stands there, dumbly, like he can’t believe what he’s heard.

She supposes that’s fair, considering she can barely believe she’s said it.

“Now!” She snaps to get him moving, which it does, and Laurel approaches as if to make this easier on him.

Well, it’s the least she can do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay AGAIN, the holidays really left me with little time to write! Hopefully the next chapter will be up much quicker!


	13. Written on Your Face

There’s a knock on her cell door early in the morning, which Sara finds odd enough all on it’s own. No one ever knocks in this place unless they’re giving you a warning, but that didn’t sound like a warning.

“Breakfast Sara,” Sawyer’s voice is rougher than usual as she slides the tray of dry toast and stale cereal through the slot in the door.

“Sara?” The blonde questions as she approaches the door, an amused grin on her face. “What’s the occasion?”

She bends down to peer through the slot, and she immediately regrets it. Sawyer is standing far enough back that she can see her face, and it is riddled with distraught.

“What’s going on?”

“There was an incident,” the guard begins, “Yesterday at the high school. A loaded gun was found in a student’s locker; that student was your daughter.” Sara feels her heart stop beating, moisture creeping onto the rims of her eyelids because… no. Sin wouldn’t… she couldn’t… no. “She was released back into Oliver Queen’s custody around 3:00 pm, neither of them have been seen since.”

Sara almost wants to ask what time it is now, what time exactly. But she can’t get the words out, and even if she could it doesn’t matter.

“Sara,” Sawyer’s voice is gentler now, sorry, Sara realizes is the word for it. “When they find your daughter they’re going to have to arrest her not only on the charges of illegal possession of an unregistered firearm, but also evading arrest. Even if they don’t try her as an adult, and I can’t promise they won’t based on her charges; she’s going to be going away for a very long time.”

 

* * *

 

With Gideon back in psych ward the hard part was over, and getting Lisa back into her cell was easy compared to the headache of getting Gideon out. During Gideon’s trips to medical Laurel had been able to work a little bit on the escape, enough that when Lisa returned and asked about the plan she was able to smirk and lead the way to the back corner of the cell.

“The toilet?” Lisa asks, a brow raised and disbelieving grin plastered onto her face. “That’s where we start?”

“Yup,” Laurel replies, popping the “P” “Well, behind it.”

Lisa’s confused face soon morphs into shock when she produces a partially shaven bolt from her sleeve. With little more than a mischievous smile Laurel places the end of it in the nuts holding the appliance to the wall and turns. In no time she has the toilet almost completely unbolted and pulled out just enough to reveal a small hole, barely big enough to fit through.

“It still needs some work,” She says, though her bright smile and even brighter eyes are clear indicators of how proud she is. “But for now…” she trails off, carefully sliding the toilet back into place and making sure it makes as little noise as possible. “We’re going to play a little game.”

 

* * *

 

“Huzzah,” Sin’s unamused voice proclaims from the kitchen, where she’s been opening and closing empty cabinets for the past couple of minutes. “I found a not decomposing bag of dry rice.”

The look of hurt on Oliver’s face is enough to make Jax look away, not wanting to get involved. He’s kneeling in front of the fireplace again, trying to get it going for the day. Oliver is pacing around the living area while Sin handles the kitchen, both of them trying to figure out what’s going on.

He’s trying to do that too, but he’s keeping it to himself.

“I’ve told you Sin, I’ll walk into town later and try and pick up some food.”

“Town’s almost ten miles away,” Jax doesn’t mean to say that out loud, but it happens anyway, and it is not helping the situation. “But um.... my dad’s old truck is in the shed, I can see if it works or if I can get it working. Worst comes to worse we can pop the license off it and put it on your car.”

The way Oliver looks at him, with this hard glare that practically screams he isn’t helping makes him want to shrink in on himself.

“Thank you Jax,” he says as a means of attempting to defuse the tension, though it only increases. “Why don’t I give you a hand?”

He’s not asking, even if it’s abundantly clear that he knows nothing about mechanics, he’s trying to make progress with their shitty situation. So Jax nods and abandons the fire, leaving it for Sin to fiddle with and leads Oliver out to the shed.

* * *

 

Nora Allen knew something was up when the new girl approached her for the first time since her arrival, especially when she suddenly wasn’t so interested in her backstory but rather in getting on the card game she and the other inmates with kitchen duty have every day during lunch. Now Nora herself didn’t have any reservations of bringing the new girl in, a new face adds some excitement to the game. But Cupid is part of the kitchen staff, and so is her girlfriend, the very same girlfriend who got in bit of an argument turned wrestling match with her cellmate just last night, and of course her cellmate works PI with Laurel.

Why can’t things ever be simple around here?

“Don’t expect to stay,” She warns the younger woman harshly as they slip into the back of the kitchen when the guards aren’t watching. Sure Nora has clearance to be back here, but Laurel doesn’t, and technically no one is supposed to be standing around an island countertop playing five-card draw.

But if prisoners were any good at following the rules, well they wouldn’t be prisoners now would they?

“The girls don’t always take well to new players.”

But Lance isn’t going to back down, something Nora knew already.

“Don’t worry,” she says, confidant as always. That’s something Nora’s noticed about the new girl in the time that she’s been here; she does a lot of strange things and she does them all with confidence. Confidence can be a tricky thing in Iron Heights, and Nora would assume other prisons as well. When you have it, it makes life easier, but have too much of it and you could very likely end up dead.

She doesn’t like thinking this way, but Laurel is probably going to be one of those who ends up dead.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.” Cupid drawls, lounging as comfortably as one possibly can in a rusting fold up chair, her eyes both narrowed and rolling all at once as she takes in the sight of the blonde who’s entered the kitchen.

“Be nice Cupid,” Nora orders as she marches over to her usual chair. “Lance here wants to play, and we would use a change of pace around here.”

A sly, devilish smirk crosses the red head’s face as she eyes the newcomer.

“Of course,” she says in a tone much too like a high school cheerleader’s for Nora’s liking. “That is so long as she’s brining something to the table.”

The eyes of all five women sitting and standing around the kitchen fly to Laurel with the cue, but the newbie takes it in stride and produces a small wad of cash from one of the two small pockets on her jumpsuit.

“Wouldn’t have come if I wasn’t.”

As Nora looks around she knows the others are all involved in a silent debate with only sideways glances serving as a means of conveying the messages, but eventually Cupid, tipping her head back and shaking out her ponytail oh-so-dramatically, sighs and rises to her feet; approaching the island and followed by the others.

“Are we gonna play cards or what?”

They play a few hands, quite a few hands, and Cupid is watching the new girl the entire time. Every move she makes, every time she folds, bets, and with every flip of every card she’s watching. Something doesn’t quite add up when it comes to the newbie. Maybe it’s who she was before Iron Heights, the high-powered lawyer, that gives her the confidence to look nearly everyone she meets in the eye. But she came into this game smiling, eager to join, and yet so far she hasn’t proven herself to be anything special when it comes to poker. She’s won a hand or two out of dumb luck, but the rest she’s lost. In fact Cupid is starting to get bored, so it’s really no wonder that the slight sound of plastic skidding against cheap tile catches her attention; and she notices Lance’s cellmate slipping into the room.

She almost says something, but she’s far too intrigued, especially when Lisa darts over to a set of drawers and hastily pours through them until she takes something and slips it into her jumpsuit.

Cupid averts her eyes to avoid being caught spying when Lisa inevitably checks for witnesses.

She must decide she hasn’t been caught, because she appears near the island.

“Laurel,” she says, “The guards are rounding everyone up for yard time, you’re not supposed to be back here, come on.”

With an obedient nod Laurel collects her small pile of winnings (a grand total of .52 cents) and says her goodbyes to the group, thanking them for the game.

Or, as Cupid believes, thanking them for the diversion.

* * *

 

Heading out into yard time Laurel and Lisa are deep in conversation. Thankfully the weather is starting to get colder so the inmates are allowed jackets for yard time, and under the extra layer no one notices any odd bulge in the shape of an eggbeater underneath Lisa’s jumpsuit.

“So you pretty much lost all of the money we pooled between the five of us?” She questions, only half annoyed, because frankly she’s still on the small high of adrenalin she got from stealing the eggbeater.

It’s not much, but she’ll take what she can get.

“No,” Laurel defends immediately, smiling despite herself. “We still have .52 cents.”

Lisa does laugh this time, but it dies quickly as her eyes settle on a sight far past them.

“I thought your sister only went up to the fence when she’s pissed?”

Laurel’s smile changes at her friend’s words, turning into a frown as she turns around and sees that Sara is indeed gripping at the steel diamonds of the fence that keeps her separated from the rest of the population. She’s at the other end of the yard, but even from here Laurel can tell that she doesn’t look happy.

“Wait here,” she orders Lisa before hastily making her way across the yard, uncaring of if a guard were to call her out for approaching a solitary prisoner or not.

None do, and she makes it to the fence in less than three minutes, met by what is possibly one of the meanest expressions she has ever seen on Sara.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sin’s missing,” The younger blonde informs her but there’s no way that she heard the words correctly.

“What?” She demands, shock starting to overtake her features.

“You heard me,” Sara all but snarls “My daughter is missing… actually, I take that back,” she’s pacing the length of the fence now, her voice rising and her hands gesturing wildly. Very few times over the course of her life has Laurel ever seen her sister hysterical, yet that is the only word she can think of to describe the scene starting in front of her. “My daughter was found hiding a gun in her locker, she was arrested and handed back over to Oliver, a man YOU decided to give her custody to-”

“Sara-” Laurel tries, calmly, to interrupt but it’s not use. In a very rare show of character Sara is panicking, and she’s not going to hear anyone out until she’s through.

“And guess what? He’s gone too!”

“What?” Laurel questions automatically.

“That’s right! They’re both M.I.A.! Oh, and they’re fugitives. They’re fugitives and we’re inmates, great track record for the Lance’s!”

“Sara.” She’s louder this time, loud enough to be heard, and when her sister looks at her she can see the fear in her eyes; she won’t admit it but she’s terrified. She’s terrified for Sin, for Oliver, for herself, and for her. “She’ll be ok,” she promises, it’s a big promise but she believes it like a fact, because it is a fact. Sin will be fine; she has to be.

Sara takes a breath, locking eyes with her as she starts to calm down and allow the fear to run its course through her body.

“You’ve been raising her for the past two years,” she finally brings herself to say, “Do you think she really brought that gun to school?”

She’s deadly serious, terrifyingly worried, so Laurel thinks hard on it. Sure, Sin’s been angry ever since Sara was convicted. She barely talked for the first month, she started letting her grades slip, and she hated going to therapy. But then, having had enough of the passive aggression, Laurel had brought her to her old self-defense trainer, Ted Grant. He has a way of getting to the root of a problem, and eventually he managed to work his magic on Sin. Sure she still has her grievances, always will, but he took her off that dark path she had been starting on.

“No,” she answers and although it’s the answer Sara wants to hear, her shoulders still deflate and worry is still beyond evident in her eyes.

“So somebody set her up,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Just like me.”

“All the more reason we need to get you out of here.” Laurel says, its written all over Sara’s face where her thoughts are going, and it’s nowhere good. “What’s done is done, you can’t help Sin if you’re dead.”

Sara nods, uncertain, but nods all the same, and that’s enough for Laurel.

“Ok, so what’s the next step?” She asks and Laurel can’t help the devilish smile that crosses her face.

“That depends,” she answers coyly, “How would we go about starting a riot on the floor?”

 

* * *

 

“Are you sure about this?” Lisa asks as she positions herself by the corner of their door, keeping a lookout for any guards.

“I’ll be ten minutes, tops.” Laurel assures her, she’s finishing with stuffing their pillows under her blanket and is now moving over to the toilet, carefully unbolting it from the wall just enough to squeeze through the small hole in the wall behind it.

The inner walls of Iron Heights aren’t terribly confusing to navigate so long as you have an idea of where you’re going, and Laurel has much more than that. Following the lines hidden within the images on her arms it doesn’t take her long to find her destination: a large concrete wall. Approaching the wall she looks it over, reaching out to touch it and then feeling along its surface, as though the action will confirm that she has the right wall.

But it won’t, she’s just going to have to trust that her map is right.

Stepping back from the wall Laurel heads just a few steps to the left and grabs an old painter’s light that is left back here for guards or maintenance workers. She drags it over until the legs dip into these three tiny divots in the concrete floor, left behind from when this very stand was positioned in the same place day in and day out during construction.

With the light now in place Laurel flicks it on and steps in front of it, pulling out the paper and pencil she’s brought with her. With the light shining through the paper Laurel undoes the top few buttons of her jumpsuit and frees her left arm from it’s sleeve. She then smoothes the paper over the images of a devil’s face on her inner elbow and tracing the lines of the image as carefully as she can. Once she has the image transferred over to the paper it’s time for the tricky part. Very carefully she masks the paper over the light so that the image is displayed on the wall, and she takes two bobby pins from her hair. She stabs the first pin through the top of the paper, clipping it to the light, and then repeats her action o the bottom. With the paper now secure she heads back to the wall with her pencil, marking X’s at the nose of the devil, the tips of each horn, and the tips of the two bottom fangs.

She turns off the light and snatches the paper on her way out, leaving no sign she was ever there, and makes one last stop before returning to her cell.

Winter may be coming, but Iron Heights is about to experience a heat wave.


	14. Riot (Part 1)

Oliver Queen is not usually an emotional man. In fact, he has been accused many times throughout his life of being the exact opposite. He’s been called heartless, stony, perpetually indifferent, and all other sorts of variations of the like. For the most part these accusations are accurate. He doesn’t let many things get to him. During Sara’s trial he sat stoically in the courtroom, and when the press was demanding to know why he was insisting on the woman’s innocence in a seemingly cut and dry case over the murder of his father he firmly stated that he’s known Sara since they were children, and that he won’t believe she could be capable of such a violent act. The only emotion he ever remotely showed during that whole ordeal was anger, when some scumbag with the paper had asked if he was defending Sara because he is actually the father of her child.

He shut that guy down real quick and told anyone else who thought about dragging Sin into their investigation to forget it; the poor girl was already going through far too much.

All of this being said he is currently working on the old truck whilst Jax and Sin clean up the cabin, and he is trying to keep himself from breaking down.

He isn’t Sin’s father, but he is all she has left and she, in turn, is all he has left. Ever since his mother and sister cut ties with him after the trial the Lance girls have been his family, and now the only one not in prison, since she’s on the run, is counting on him to keep her alive.

Not to mention Jax.

The poor guy is only a few years older than Sin, barely an adult, and as of today he’s lost everyone he loves.

Oliver uses his sleeve to wipe away to moisture in his eyes, he’s terrified, but he has to keep the three of them safe.

He cannot fail them.

 

* * *

 

Iron Heights heats up slowly but steadily through the night, and by morning the place is an absolute sauna.

The corridor is filled with the moans of complaining women, and every time that a guard passes by they find themselves cursed at by an increasing number of inmates. Laurel almost feels bad for the guards; being stuck in their stiff outfits and all. She and Lisa have tied their hair up in buns and stripped down as much as they’re willing: her to her panties and tank top, Lisa full out to nothing but her panties and bra.

“I swear,” Lisa pants, slouched against the hard metal brace of their bed. It’s far from comfortable, or sanitary, but she’s trying to find a tiny bit of coolness left in the metal. “This almost isn’t worth it, it’s so hot I’m starting to get nauseas.”

Laurel rolls her eyes; Lisa can be such a drama queen sometimes. “Just make sure it goes in the toilet.” She comments dryly but she does have to admit that her cellmate isn’t wrong; at this rate people are going to get sick before they’re frustrated enough to start a riot.

“You look more on edge than usual, Lance.” The blue-eyed woman observes, her head lolling lazily to the side with the words. “And that’s saying something.”

Laurel growls and moves from where she’s standing by the door, arms still crossed tightly over her chest as she begins to pace.

“This needs to move along,” she mutters, “We need a riot to start soon, before they fix the heat, or the whole escape is botched.”

Lisa smirks a little, clearly amused by how tightly Laurel has wound herself.

“Relax, nothing gets done fast in this place. Besides, I can hear people who are two halls over from us, so people they’re getting antsy.” With that said the brunette heaves herself to her feet and winks, crossing over to where Laurel was previously standing. “All they need is a little push.”

“What are you doing?” Laurel can’t help but to be both nervous and skeptical, she loves Lisa but that twinkle of mischief the other woman’s eyes is sometimes very worrisome.

Something Lisa seems to take pride in.

“Did I ever tell you that Cisco gave me a few Spanish lessons?” She asks as if it’s an explanation and then she turns her face towards the door and, of all things, begins to sing some Spanish song.

“That’s your plan?!” Laurel hisses after less than a verse, so Lisa stops just enough to look over at her.

“Have a little faith Lance,” she says then resumes her singing, which isn’t very good by the way.

Laurel is about to tell her to stop again, when an inmate somewhere down the hall screams for Lisa to shut up, and with a smug grin she starts to sing louder, and Laurel gets it.

This place is already uncomfortably hot, everyone is one edge, and so the last thing that anyone wants to deal with is some idiot singing in Spanish, not to mention she probably has half the words wrong.

More screams of protest soon join, followed by the sounds cell doors being tugged until…

_CLANG!  
_ The first lock breaks.

What follows next is nothing that Laurel can see, but what she hears is a huge racket of broken locks and encouraging whistles, followed by demands to be set free.

The guards must have tried to stop them and lost.

 

* * *

 

With her short hair tied back and two desk fans running, as well as her ceiling fan, Warden Grant is trying to get some work done. She’s already called the heating company, and they’ve assured her that someone will be at Iron Heights first thing in the morning.

Idiots.

She doesn’t really take it as a surprise when things on the floor start to get, well, heated, so she stations two extra guards to help with the rowdy inmates.

Then Smythe and Breen bust down their door.

The only guard nearby moves for them, but those two are both dangerous and the poor man ends up limp in the corridor, Breen snatching his keys and running from cell to cell.

Staring at the horror on the monitor in front of her Cat grabs her microphone, “All guards exit and secure the floor immediately, all guards exit and secure the floor now!”

 

* * *

 

_“This is perfect,”_ Laurel thinks to herself as she and Helena head into the walls from the tunnel behind her toilet. Sure, it’s more than a little crazy out on the floor, but it’s a perfect distraction. With the prisoners going berserk no one will notice two missing, especially when they’re going to alternate with Lisa every so often just to throw off suspicion.

“Ok,” Helena huffs as they come to a stop at the wall Laurel marked up yesterday. “So what exactly are we doing here?”

Laurel approaches the wall, her eyes scanning over it to be sure that the X’s are still there, not that she suspects anybody would think to erase them even if they found them. Once she’s confirmed they’re all right where she marked them she holds up the eggbeater and gestures with it for Helena to come over.

“We use this,” she starts the explanation, “To make a hole in this wall. It will connect our side of the prison with the old sewage system.”

“Ok…” Helena trails off, “And where will the old sewage system take us?”

“That,” Laurel replies with a twinkle of mischief in her eyes, “Is phase two. For now we need to worry about doing this the right way.” She points to the first X, “We start here,” she instructs before moving to the second and third X’s at the top, “Then these two, and finally,” she points to the bottom two X’s, “These. If we go out of that order the wall could crumble too early and take the room above us down with it, meaning we’ll be found out, so we need to be careful, got it?” Helena nods and Laurel does the same in return, “Ok,” she says a little nervously, positioning the eggbeater on the first X, “Here we go.”

 

* * *

 

Lisa knows that this riot is necessary to provide Laurel with enough time to get that wall down, but things are starting to get out of hand. She doesn’t know what happened to whatever poor guard was taken down in order to get the keys to release everyone, but she can imagine they’re either dead or close to it. The other guards got out, and there is currently a whole mob of inmates trying to break through both the door and the barred-glass window into the guard’s station just outside the floor. She almost doesn’t know if she would prefer they get out or stay in. On one hand if people start getting out then Iron Heights is going to end up in shambles, but at the same time if things stay the way they are now it won’t be long before bodies start dropping.

Not that that isn’t going to happen either way.

A loud jolting sounds brings her attention to the window and her jaw drops in horror, the girls’ effort to pull the bars free from the concrete wall they’re embedded in is actually working, they’re coming loose.

 

* * *

 

Sara is, for the first and most likely last time, actually finding herself grateful to be imprisoned in solitary. Solitary is located on the lowest, oldest, level of Iron Heights. It’s underground, so even in with the heating system broken she stays relatively cool.

Lying on the floor of her hole, an effort to keep even cooler, she wonders how things are going up on the floor; she hopes they aren’t too bad. She’s heard that things can get pretty rowdy up there, and every once in awhile in the yard someone will walk by and inform her that there is suddenly one less prisoner in gen pop. She knows Laurel should be safe through this so long as she stays in the walls, and no one realizes where she is. Taking a deep breath she convinces herself of this fact, that Laurel will be ok.

Then the alarms sound.

She sits up and runs to her door, pushing the slot meant for her food open to try and see out in the hall, but aside from the blaring red lights she can’t see anything.

Still, the blaring red lights are enough to know that whatever is happening it isn’t anything good.

 

* * *

 

Leonard isn’t sure whether he should be relieved or angry that he’s the only doctor on duty today.

Relieved is probably the correct answer, he wouldn’t want Caitlin caught up in the middle of this, but with the heat busted and the news of the riot downstairs having been relayed over the intercom, not to mention visible on the monitors, the inmates up here in a long term stay have found themselves inspired to try and take their drugs for themselves, or revenge on their doctor.

Yeah, Leonard is definitely wishing he weren’t here alone.

He’s barricaded himself in his office, though it isn’t going to last very long. The hospitalized inmates are trying to brake through his supposedly indestructible windows, and if the cracks starting are any indicator they aren’t going to be indestructible for very long. Not to mention that the office phone is out there, meaning he can’t call for help, as if there’s someone in this building available to help him.

 

* * *

 

Panting Laurel hands the eggbeater over to Helena, and the other woman growls.

“This is going to take forever.” She says flatly but starts on her turn all the same, and before Laurel can retort they hear the sound of metal banging against metal coming from the direction they came from.

Lisa’s signal that she’s coming.

“Maybe,” The blonde agrees, secretly happy that her cellmate is coming to relieve her, though she isn’t entirely sure she’s ready to get caught up in the chaos of the riot. “But it’s going to get us out of here.”

“It better,” Helena scoffs, “Otherwise, you’re dead.”

She isn’t kidding, not in the least, and Laurel tries to be comfortable with that until Lisa shows up.

Like Laurel and Helena she is wearing her tank top undershirt and the pants of her jumpsuit, the sleeves tied into a knot around her waist.

“Good luck out there,” she says to Laurel, “Things have gotten nuts.”

Laurel nods and heads for the tunnel, crawling through it and back into her cell. She’s careful to listen before she pushes the toilet aside, to make sure that no one is around. It’s hard to tell with all the screaming on the other side, but she’s fairly certain that nobody is going to see her so she carefully inches the appliance out of the way just enough to see, and then enough to get out once she knows the coast is clear.

Nobody was paying attention to her cell, why would they? The sight of the open door is her first clue that Lisa wasn’t kidding when she said things were getting crazy out on the floor. The screams that are filled with just as much terror as they are thrill, the whole thing meshing together to create a sound of absolute mania.

Her movements are slow and careful as she pads toward her cell’s open door, anxious about seeing what’s happening down the hall but it’s necessary.

She has to know what she’s started.

No one is in the corridor itself, but it’s evident that hasn’t been the case all day. The floor is littered with everything from candy wrappers, to articles of clothing. From her door she can see around the corner of the wall to where the guards normally enter and exit the wing, and the viewing window is destroyed.

Lisa really wasn’t kidding when she said things were getting nuts.

This has gone horribly further than Laurel ever thought it might. The riot is more than that now.

Iron Heights is under the siege of its inmates.


	15. Riot (Part 2)

Sara has no idea how long the alarms have been blaring for, too long if you ask her, when she finally hears footsteps and shouting voices that don’t belong to other pissed off solitary inmates. She isn’t stupid enough to think for even a second that the newcomers are guards, she can tell by the hyena-like screaming alone that they’re inmates.

“Hey!” She joins in thee shouts of the other solitary prisoners, “Get us out!” She doesn’t even know if these new inmates are capable of letting them, never mind if they even want to, but before she can think anymore on it her cell door opens and she’s met with the sight of Siobhan Smythe twirling a guard’s key ring around her finger.

“Why do you think we came down here?” She mocks and Sara offers her a quick thanks before heading off down the hall, mind set on finding her way to the floor and making sure Laurel’s alright.

 

* * *

 

Creeping slowly and carefully towards the guard’s station Laurel knows she should be sitting in her cell and keeping watch, but she can’t squash the need to know the extent of what she’s started. The station is a complete mess, but empty for now and most of the monitors are still working and displaying all kinds of horrors.

There are fights happening everywhere. Some people she knows, and some who she doesn’t. There aren’t a lot of guards, she notices, meaning that they must have evacuated as many as they could. If they have then things in here are only going to go from bad to worse.

There is, however, one guard left that she can see. Mick Rory. He’s in a hallway, trying to take on both Rosa and Lesley, losing, and on another screen she can see Shawna approaching their position. Then, to make matters worse, another working monitor is displaying the med bay and things are escalating quickly for Dr. Snart.

 

* * *

 

 

Trying to bargain with prisoners is like trying to take food from a hungry wild animal, in Maggie’s opinion at least. When the riot started all the guards knew the day was going to be a long one, when they escaped the floor they knew they were in trouble, and when Warden Grant called for an evacuation of all guards they knew things were officially out of hand. Most of them got out, but there are a few who are missing. No one is saying it, but they’re all thinking the same thing; that anyone left in that person who isn’t an inmate is guaranteed to be dead by now.

Leonard and Mick are among those unlucky few still inside.

They’ve called the S.W.A.T. Team in regards to the situation, but apparently their policy involves giving the inmates a chance to surrender the building peacefully before using force. Something about wanting to prevent any further loss of lives than whatever may have already occurred. Maggie understands that logic, she really does, but with her two best friends trapped inside of that chaos it’s getting a little hard to remember that.

“I don’t like this Maggie,” Warden Grant says firmly, coming to stand beside her and join her in staring up at the building. “Not one bit.”

Maggie stays silent at first, not sure whether she should reassure her boss or agree with her.

“It’ll pass, ma’am.” She finally decides on, turning her head to look at the other woman. “Iron Heights may be a prison, but there are some good women in there. Sooner or later they’ll have had enough of the crazier ones and once enough of them reach that point, they’ll surrender.”

Grant hums in acknowledgment of the statement, in acceptance of the logic.

“Maybe,” she agrees in a still very concerned voice. “But how many people are we going to lose before that happens?”

* * *

 

The hallway is already a bloodbath when Shawna gets there. She’s looking for Cupid, but instead she runs into Helena’s girls beating the crap out of Rory, one of the better guards, and her blood boils. She doesn’t care much for him, but she’s still pissed at Helena for the other night, sticking her nose into places it has no business being and everything else. Her cellmate seems to be under the impression that she’s nothing to Cupid, to anybody, but a plaything. She needs to be reminded otherwise.

She doesn’t say anything while marching up to the fight, as she hasn’t yet been noticed. So she’s sure it comes as a surprise when she announces herself with a hard fist slamming across Lesley’s face, Rosa looking up in horror when she notices. Shawna simply shakes out her hand.

“What the hell is your problem?!” Lesley roars as she gets to her feet, Shawna only scoffs.

“Tell your boss that mine and Carrie’s relationship is none of her business.” She snaps and Lesley looks personally offended by the statement.

“We are not your messengers,” Rosa snaps as her friend stalks even closer to Shawna, her patience gone.

“But, since you’re so keen of starting a fight…” She growls before moving to punch Shawna in the face but the smaller woman isn’t stupid and sees the hit coming, so it’s only natural that she blocks it.

Lesley doesn’t like that much and brings up her other hand to pull at Shawna’s hair, an action which Shawna matches and before they know it the two women are spinning each other in circles as they wrestle. Eventually Rosa leaves the bloody, unconscious mess that is Officer Rory and runs to help her friend, winding her arms around Shawna’s waist and pulling her back.

But Shawna won’t be taken down so easily.

When Rose starts dragging her back she doesn’t resist, in fact she helps. She runs her feet backwards to send Rosa off balance and crush her against the wall behind them; she even knocks her head back like a whip in order to slam the blonde’s head into the concrete. The action leaves her with a fresh pain at the back of her skull but Rosa is worse off, which is all she cares about. With the other woman’s grip suddenly lacking Shawna turns hastily around and wastes no time in locking her hands tightly around her neck, a strangled choke coming out of the blonde’s mouth in response as her eyes bulge from her skull. She squeezes tight and soon she feels a pair of arms winding around her own neck and putting her into a chokehold.

_Snap._

 

* * *

 

Sara’s still running, blindly, through the halls of the prison. She’s run into some people on her way, and far too many fights, but no one has given her any trouble. That is one good thing about being known as the resident assassin, no one is interested in picking a fight with her simply for the hell of it. Still, she isn’t about to push her luck by asking for directions to the floor, or if anyone has seen Laurel, so instead she’s following her memory. She’s been to a few places in the prison: visitation, the church, medical, the yard, even the cafeteria once. But never has she actually been to the main floor where the general population of inmates is kept, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that she’s lost.

After she’s been running in what seems like circles for far too long she eventually stumbles across a guard’s station, though it’s already been ransacked. There is still one working monitor, displaying a full out war going on up in medical with the doctor having already barricaded the door to his office and now trying to get the windows, but he clearly doesn’t have enough heavy equipment to do the job.

She sighs as she takes in the scene playing out before her. On one hand she needs to find Laurel, but on the other hand that doctor is Lisa’s brother and she’ll be crushed if anything happens to him. Plus she saw a sign for medical not too long ago, so she could probably get there.

Laurel is just going to have to wait.

 

* * *

 

“Ugh,” Lisa groans and sits herself on the ground, running a hand over her head and trying to wipe away the sweat as Helena takes the eggbeater. “This is taking forever.”

“No kidding,” The other woman scoffs, lining up the beater with the center hole they seem to be making almost no progress on. “I swear, after all this, Lance better be able to get us out of here.”

“She will,” Lisa assures, confident in her cellmate’s promises. Helena isn’t exactly convinced, but continues on with drilling into their hole anyway, and finally the tip of the eggbeater breaks through to the other side.

“Would you look at that,” she muses to herself with a proud grin, tapping lightly at the surrounding areas of the hole with her tool and them crumbling easily.

Lisa gets to her feet with a grin, admiring the hole before her, they’re getting somewhere.

 

* * *

 

Leonard whips his head around at the sound of shattering glass to discover that the inmates have finally managed to punch a hole in his window and it’s getting bigger by the second, threats being screamed at him from the other side. They are going to kill him, there isn’t any question about it, and they’re going to do it soon. He’s armed with nothing more than a cane and prayers that he will somehow make it out of this alive; at this point he’s willing to compromise on remaining in one piece.

“Hey!” A voice suddenly shouts from behind him and he whirls around to see a human arm reaching out from the ceiling, attached to none other than the inmate nicknamed Assassin, not that the name has ever suited her, in his opinion. “Come on!” She continues to shout at him and that’s when he realizes she wants him to take her hand; that she’s trying to help him.

He drops the cane without a second thought and climbs up on the medical cot just as an inmate starts to crawl through the hole in his window. She pulls his weight up until he can hoist himself the rest of the way.

“Thanks,” he breaths in relief but she’s already crawling away.

“Don’t thank me yet.”

He nods, she’s right, they need to get away from medical before the patients try and follow them into the ceiling. As far as he can tell there are none who give it a go, however a few very pointy objects do end up impaled through the tiles and barely miss the two of them. They move fast until they can no longer hear the screams of the hospitalized inmates, then farther still because it’s not like they can stay on the same flimsy tiles for very long. Eventually they find a small alcove of wood, some sort of old repair job from the prison’s construction if Leonard had to guess, and sit themselves down on the edge. It’s a tight fit, one that has their sides pressed right up against one another, but it’s safe.

“Ok, now I’m saying thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Sara says through a small laugh, “Any idea how I could get to the floor from here?”

“Depends, you looking to bring me down there as some kind of sacrifice?” He’s mostly teasing, because he doesn’t really believe that she would do that to him, but even in the midst of all this chaos this prison is still made up of two very opposite sides, and she and him are not on the same one.

But she laughs at his suggestion, “Might help out my street cred, since I haven’t actually killed anyone.” She muses, “No, I just want to make sure our sisters are surviving in this mess.”

He can’t help it when his heart feels just a little warmer inside his chest when she says that. Naturally he’s been worried sick about Lisa this entire time, it’s his job, and it makes him feel a little better knowing that he isn’t the only one with her in mind. Even if Sara’s focus is primarily on Laurel, Lisa probably an afterthought to her, she’s still a thought, and it puts his worries at ease knowing that she has someone looking out for her.

“Lisa’s tough, so is Laurel. They can take care of themselves and each other, they’ll be fine.” He hopes he sounds more assuring to her than he does to himself. She looks up at him as if she wants to ask how he can be so sure about her sister, but then looks back at the empty space ahead of them when she remembers that he sees her every day for her insulin.

They sit in silence for another few minutes, neither of them particularly fond of the idea of moving and risking certain death at the chance of coming out in the wrong room.

“You said you haven’t killed anyone,” he eventually breaks the silence, an eyebrow raised at her when she looks. “That just in here?”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes, “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

He considers that for a moment. True, there are plenty of inmates who insist they’re innocent and nine out of ten of them are always lying. But there’s always been something about the quiet ones like Sara that Leonard finds himself more inclined to give a chance to.

“The system is screwed up Sara, you wouldn’t be the first person I’ve actually seen framed.” She isn’t expecting that answer, which he considers to be a good thing, and he smirks at the bewildered look she gives him. “Did Lisa ever tell you I did a stint in Juvie as a teenager?” She shakes her head wordlessly, a sight that amuses him just a little bit. “Armed robbery, fourth theft in as many months. They put me away for three months but… my dad was an accomplice.” He stops there, suddenly aware of the conversation he is about to entrust to a woman who might as well be a stranger, not to mention a deadly one. “My old man was a lot of things, not a single one of them good. Mom died when Lisa was two. Anyway, they looked into my dad while I was away and I guess they realized what a piece of crap he really was. They took Lisa away from him while I was gone and when I got out they put me into the nearest foster home willing to take me, but they wouldn’t tell me what happened to Lisa.” She’s listening to his story with profound interest, and he has to make a conscious effort to unclench the fist he’s made. “I got lucky with that home. I spent the first year doing anything and everything I could to get into trouble, to either get taken away or make my new parents want to give me back, but they were persistent. Kendra, my new mother, she had lost quite a few people in her life and saw right through what I was doing. She explained to me that I could sit around and make her hate me all I wanted, the chances I would be put into a home with Lisa were virtually nonexistent. So she gave me a choice, keep sabotaging my life, or make something of myself so that when I eventually did see Lisa again I could be a brother she would be proud of.” He can’t help but chuckle ironically to himself. “I never thought prison would be where I found her.”

She thinks on that for a minute, probably on his entire story. He knows it’s a lot to take in, it’s a lot to say and because of that he normally doesn’t. That and he doesn’t want anyone’s pity, which is typically the response he gets, but prisoners don’t usually tend to give pity, and Sara doesn’t seem like the type to try using his past against him in some way.

“I never thought I would be in prison,” her low voice brings him out of his thoughts, and he looks over to find her shaking her head. “I never thought Laurel would be in prison, I never thought my daughter would be missing and evading arrest.” She is still shaking her head, most likely thinking of just how wrong the words that have come from her mouth are.

“How old is she?” Leonard finds himself asking, only for Sara to look up at him in confusion. “Your daughter.”

A small little half smile finds it’s way onto her face, like no one has asked he about her daughter in ages and it’s her favorite topic in the world. “Fourteen,” she replies, chuckling at the surprised expression on his face. “What?”

“Nothing,” he splutters, “Just… not to be rude but… how old were you when you had her?”

She actually laughs at his awkwardness, which he takes as a good thing considering he was partially expecting her to take offence.

“Seventeen,” she answers before she seems to rethink it. “I think,” she amends, “Time got a little hard to keep track of on that island, but I did the math once I got back and figured I was seventeen by the time she came.”

“That’s right,” he says with an understanding nod, “You’re the one who was shipwrecked.” She nods in agreement with the statement, “Must have been scary.”

“That’s an understatement,” she agrees easily, “I mean, being alone there was terrifying enough, but then all of a sudden I had this little baby depending on me to keep her alive.”

They’re quiet again, not sure where to go from there, it’s not like he can relate anything to that.

“You know,” he finally says, “You have to be given a check up the day before they give you the chair, I can probably talk to Caitlin and get her to schedule your appointment at the same time your sister comes to me for her insulin. It’s not much, but you’d get to see her.”

“I’d like that,” she says with a small smile.

 

* * *

 

When Laurel makes it to the hallway that showed Lesley and Rosa on the monitors she stops in her tracks, horrified. A lot has clearly gone on since she left the guard station. Mick is still on the ground, a bloody heap from head to toe, and he isn’t the only one. Rosa and Shawna are both lying barely ten feet from him, Shawna’s head positioned in an impossible angle and it’s all Laurel needs to see to know that she’s gone. Rosa is next, lying on the ground with deep purple marks forming along her neck.

Lesley is nowhere to be found.

She can’t do anything for Shawna or Rosa, and so when her feet finally find a way to move they carry her over to Mick. She gets onto her knees beside him, fearing the worst for his fate because there is so. much. blood.

“Mick,” She pleads, shaking his shoulder hastily, “Mick talk to me, it’s Laurel. Come on get up.” He groans and a weight falls off of her chest, even if his eyes are still closed. “Oh thank you,” she isn’t sure if she’s talking to herself, Mick, or some divine power but she doesn’t really care. The important thing is that Mick is still alive, there’s one less death on her hands. “Ok, hang in there Mick. Come on, I’m going to get you out of here.”

She starts lifting his arm then and he groans again, this time seemingly in pain. “Sorry,” she winces and continues pulling the battered limb along her shoulders. “You’re going to need to help me here, I can’t move you on my own.”

“Right,” she barely hears the mumbled word from him, but she is grateful for it all the same when he starts trying push up to his feet. It takes some time, much more than Laurel would like, but they eventually make it off the ground and she starts back the way she came with him leaning on her.

They move slowly through the corridors of the prison, and by the time they’re back on the floor Laurel feels ready to drop from exhaustion. It takes everything in her to drag Mick as far as her cell and deposit him onto her bunk, his eyes falling shut with the pain and fatigue brought on by his injuries. Laurel heaves out a heavy breath of relief and on instinct runs her fingers over his forehead in a comforting manner.

“It’s ok, no one’s going to hurt you here.” She pants but the rough sound of metal moving against concrete snaps her attention to the corner of the cell, where Helena and Lisa are crawling out the hole behind the toilet.  
“Guys!” She hisses immediately, “What did we talk about giving the signal?!”

“We’ve been giving the signal for ten minutes! Where have you-?” Helena stops herself cold, eyes drawn to the unconscious guard haphazardly dumped on the other woman’s bed. “Ohh no,” she eventually says, “No, nuh uh, no way, no.” She begins to ramble, her head moving quickly from side to side. “What are you thinking?!” She demands and Laurel opens her mouth to answer, though she isn’t sure what she can say, how she can explain this and what she saw in that hallway, but she doesn’t get the chance; because that’s when the sounds of gunshots start echoing.


End file.
